Nathalie says her fears around money, and her need for structure as an adult, come from how she was raised, but speaking vulnerably about it with her Dominican mom has always been hard. And Dr. Lisette Sanchez, a bilingual and bicultural psychologist helps us understand intergenerational trauma and what happens when our values conflict with our needs.
Featured Expert:
Dr. Lisette Sanchez, PhD is a bilingual and bicultural licensed psychologist, speaker and coach based out of Southern California. She is the founder of Calathea Wellness Coaching and Psychological Services, Inc. Dr. Lisette is passionate about demystifying and destigmatizing therapy and mental wellness. She believes “knowledge empowers” and has made it her mission to provide resources that empower clients to be the best version of themselves. She recently launched an IGTV Series, “Consejos w/ Dr. Lisette,” in order to increase access to information about mental wellness and therapy. Dr. Lisette began her training at UC San Diego, where she majored in psychology. Dr. Lisette then moved to New York City, where she completed a dual masters degree in psychological counseling from Teachers College at Columbia University. During her graduate program, Dr. Lisette received the prestigious Arthur Zankel Urban Fellowship, a financial aid award to work with disadvantaged inner-city youth. This experience further enhanced her passion for destigmatizing mental health, building community, and sharing knowledge. Dr. Lisette completed her doctorate in counseling psychology at the University of Oregon. During her time there, she strengthened her clinical skills, solidified her research interest in career development, and completed a Spanish Language Psychological Service and Research Specialization. Learn more about her work and practice here.
If you loved this episode, be sure to listen to She's Trying to Close the Emotional Gap with Papí and Unable to Ask Her Parents for Emotional Support.
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Juleyka Lantigua:
Hi, everybody. Today we welcome Nathalie. She's a Dominican-American woman who is really aware of how some of her experiences growing up at home are impacting her life as an adult, but she struggles to talk to her mom about it in an open and vulnerable way. Let's get into it.
Nathalie: I'm Nathalie Benja. I use she, her as pronouns. I am from Washington Heights, AKA Little Dominican Republic, in New York City. Growing up, I called my mom and dad, mami and papi. I was a very shy and super introverted loner child, and I still very much am that kind of person.
As a child, I was very on my own, always reading a book. I had a very difficult time getting close to people even if it was somebody like my mom. I never really took advantage of having her always nearby to talk about my feelings or things that I was going through in school because I wasn't really a person that liked to share my emotions too much.
Nathalie: Recently, I was hanging out with my mom at a Chipotle of all places, just having lunch, gossiping about family things. We were talking about a specific group of relatives and their parent-child relationship, and it made me think about intergenerational trauma and how you're raised really shapes who you are. She disagreed a little bit or didn't really understand what that really meant. She laughed about it. And not that I have personal experience with physical trauma, but I think everybody has some sort of... Our personalities, again, are shaped by how we're raised, so I just brought up to my mom like, oh, there were things that you said growing up that, honestly, affected how I look at things.
For example, I always remember her saying, "I don't have money for this. I don't have money for that," all that stuff, so I always grew up with a fear of never being able to have enough. I'm scared of making too much money. What do I do with it? I'm scared of not having enough. It was a huge battle, so I mentioned that to her and, again, she was being defensive. "Oh, I didn't really say it that way. I was very specific with things that I couldn't afford. I tried my best," all of those things, and I was like, "Yeah, for sure, I completely agree, but I want you to know that the things you say have left a dent in my life, and this is how it's happened," and then, yeah, similar to maybe a lot of other people that's growing up with a single mom and experiencing a parent leaving has amplified my need for structure.
Nathalie: Another thing that comes to mind is I've never really seen my parents be emotional, cry or anything, and I would cry very easily, and I've always seen it as a really bad thing to do. I would always beat myself up for it. Even to this day, I have a tough time expressing my feelings, and I avoid certain conversations because I know it might end up leading me to cry and things like that.
I've always felt like I didn't fit in with my mom's side of the family specifically because I felt different. I was always the person at house parties with my family that wouldn't dance, and I would just be in the corner just watching and observing things. And because my mom has child-like spirit and is always laughing, she would laugh about it, and I would feel, "Oh, she's laughing at me. I'm doing the wrong thing," kind of. I should be more like her.
Now looking at it, I'm wondering if I was just trying to be kind of a balance in the family or for my mom and our relationship. Sometimes I feel like I parent her in a way. I had brought that up to her and she was kind of confused about it. She mentioned, oh, but you can't just blame it all on me. Also you had papi there, he probably did stuff too. I was, oh yeah, I'm not putting the blame on you. I kind of was getting a little heated with her at that point, because I was, I'm not telling you this for you to validate my feelings. I'm just trying to express to you, this is how I feel.
Well, she thanked me for expressing my feelings because she said, you've never opened up to me before about those specific things. I know who you are as a person. And I know these types of things are difficult for you. Her telling me that it made me feel really good. And I was, oh wow, I can actually do this with her and maybe I can try it with other people in my family.
I think she also holds things in. So I wonder who she has to talk things about. And I think about that every once in a while, but I haven't worked up the courage to be vulnerable again, to be, hey, I'm here to talk with you about whatever you want. Are you actually okay? And sometimes I think it is too late. Why am I starting this now? But even just having that one conversation opening up a little bit reminded me this can actually feel good.
Lantigua: Whew. As a Dominican American woman, I really relate to Natalie's story. Conversations around our upbringing, about the legacy of our experiences and the traumas that we've all experienced can be extremely difficult to tackle, even more so if we try to talk to our parents about it. As I listened to Natalie giving it a go with her mom, I felt really proud of her. I was silently cheering her on. Her experience made me wonder about what we as first gens can do to engage with our loved ones around these deeply rooted issues, especially when we want to be open and vulnerable. And that's not always the norm in our families. So to help us figure it out, I did what I always do. I called in an expert.
Lisette Sanchez:
I'm Dr. Lisette Sanchez. My pronouns are she, her, and I'm a licensed psychologist. I specialize in working with bipoc and first gen professionals by my practice, which I named Calathea Wellness Coaching and Psychological Services. Calathea is a plant variety that symbolizes new beginnings, which is why it's so special for me to name it after these plants, because it really represents the communities that I want to work with.
Lantigua: When you listen to Natalie's story, what did you hear?
Sanchez: First, I thought it was incredibly powerful how vulnerable she was willing to be around her mother. What I heard and a lot of what she was sharing is a lot of intergenerational trauma and cycles. I heard a lot of power, hearing her really work hard to reclaim her voice by trying to understand her thinking patterns and her relationships, right? Her relationship with money, her relationship with her family, her relationship as she approaches new experiences and what that means for her.
Lantigua: Take me through what the patterns are that you identified listening to her testimonial.
Sanchez: One is a big pattern around silence. She spoke about how it is a challenge for her to begin to be more expressive and to really find her voice. And she identified as someone who's always been really introverted. But she also spoke on how she's learning to talk about her emotions and really finding her voice in that and highlights how her mother, in her perception, she didn't really recognize her mother having that support or having a space where she can talk about her feelings. So that would be one big pattern. The other one I briefly mentioned earlier, is that relationship with finances. And this is really common in a lot of children of immigrants, where there's a different relationship around the value of money, what it means to an individual and how we navigate it. There's something that often happens that I refer to and is commonly known as a scarcity mindset.
You don't ever feel you'll have enough. And so even when you're making a lot of money, there's always this fear of, how am I going to afford my bills? How am I going to pay this if I give myself an extra luxury? And so that's when I bring up the trauma around money, the trauma around the silence. And she also mentioned a lot around the different family dynamic with her father exiting the family and what it was to then be raised by a single parent.
Sanchez: And so what I love about how she speaks about her upbringing is how much insight she has into how it's impacted her. And so that's another way that she's breaking these different cycles by just even having that insight and awareness and recognizing because this happened to me, I'm somebody who benefits from having a lot more structure in my life. And by creating this structure, I am challenging the narrative and I'm challenging these patterns of feeling stuck because I am in control.
Lantigua: All right. So I'm going to ask you a question that probably requires a book length answer, but I want you to give it your best shot, and I recognize that coming into the question. We are becoming quite accustomed to using the word trauma and it's appropriate in many, many instances. But many of us, myself included, who grew up in the cohort, the pre 1990s immigrants, we thought of our trauma as values, as core experiences that shaped us, as things that defined who we are. Can you give us just a very cursory explanation of when something crosses over from being of value that you saw exhibited to being a trauma that creates some sort of a foundational rift in who you are and how you go out into the world from that family?
Sanchez: Yeah. Thank you, Juleyka. That's a really good question and you're right, it's something that requires a much more in-depth explanation, but I will try to answer it with an example. When we talk about values and trauma, a common value would be respect, right? Or respecting specifically our elders. And the reason that I bring this up when we're talking about trauma is that at times what this can lead to is further silencing, right? You have a negative interaction with a family member, maybe an elder, where they maybe disrespect your boundary in some way.
A boundary could be as small as, I just don't want to go dance. But your elders are, no, you got to get going you know, [foreign language 00:11:29], let's get it. And in that moment, your values are in a direct conflict because you're, oh, but I want to respect this person, but your needs then, you want to respect someone, but then your needs are not being met because your needs are that you don't want to dance. You don't want to do that, right? And so while this is a very simple example, what happens is that then the individual will then try to accommodate so much that then they start to be more people pleasing or they'll start doing more for others and stop really paying attention to their own needs.
Sanchez: How I view this as trauma is because it then impacts your sense of self and your mental health, right? Because in your mind, whether and or not you're aware of it, your sense of self worth is based on how much you serve others, not how much your needs are being met.
Lantigua: That's a really good example. And I can see that there is a scale from the value of, let's respect our elders, to the behavior of no, you have to dance because otherwise I'm going to take offense. So here's another easy question for you. How can we begin to, for ourselves, establish that difference between something that was useful and helpful, like a value, a good example, a tradition maybe, to something that actually we have to accept as having been hurtful. What are the signs? What are the tells?
Sanchez: You know, what's hard about this work is that sometimes when it's become our norm, we're not aware of how much harm it's causing to us. Let me think to back to the example that I gave, right? You start noticing you have unexplained headaches every time someone invites you to a party or stomach aches. And you may not be able to explain why. Why is it every time I get invited to another Fiesta I feel sick? I feel sick, right?
Sanchez: So that could be anxiety or depression symptoms that are manifesting physically. So those ones are really common for people to experience, but not so common to be labeled as mental health. What's more common are the [inaudible 00:13:43], right? If you think a little bit anxious, your increased heart rate, constantly spiraling in your thoughts about how many times am I going to be asked to do this? Planning in your mind how to escape, right? How to get out of the situation that's causing you stress. Those are, I guess, some ways that you can begin to identify that you are experiencing this on a smaller level, right? Because sometimes we don't notice it until we have an outburst. Until you're sitting there and all of a sudden you start yelling and you're, why am I yelling? This person just asked me to dance.
Lantigua: Okay. So I feel that so deeply. I'm an introvert, which nobody believes me, but when I get an invitation to something, everything tenses up. And it might even be something I want to do. It often ends up some being something that I do, actually do. But still, that initial ugh is very real, that very visceral response.
Sanchez: Yeah. And it's important to notice that, right? You'll recognize, I am an introvert. This is part of my identity. I I will always sort of feel this. And then I will assess and decide, is this something I want to do and move forward with? And that's the step that sometimes we, or individuals, maybe feel that they don't have because of how they've been conditioned to feel like they have no voice or they have no choice or that isn't an option that they have. And I think it's really common when there's the value of this responsibility and these obligations to la familia.
Lantigua: This is actually a perfect segue into my next question. And I ask this of our experts all the time, because it's a line that keeps moving. And the question is simply, what responsibility does someone like Natalie, a first gen who's working through her stuff, what responsibility does she have to help her mom work through her stuff? And is that helpful as we're working through our stuff or should those two things happen separately in the chronology?
Sanchez: So this is also a really hard question because what responsibility do we have? What do we owe to anyone, right? But also highlight how subjective it is for individuals because when people, listen, they'll be, oh, this is what I have to do.
Lantigua: Oh, no, no, no. We are very clear that this is not a do this kind of show, this is a consider.
Sanchez: Yes. Consider, have some options. And so first is really reflecting on how much of this is actually my responsibility. Initially, when I work with folks, therapy can be really individualistic and it can feel like you're betraying [inaudible 00:16:23] and selfish. Absolutely. In my work, what I really try to do is challenge folks to recognize that that individual focus, while it may feel really selfish, it is community healing. Because when you are healed, when you are able to respond, instead of react, when you are able to pause when you are feeling triggered, instead of automatically go to that anger response or that crying response, or feeling like a victim in that moment, that creates so many changes for the people around you. If I was to say, here are some considerations for how to heal and how to navigate healing for yourself and your family or for the others, I would recommend starting with you.
Lantigua: Are there sort of like deal breakers? Are there things where, when you talk to your clients, you're just, I don't know that you can get past this, I don't know that this is something you should forgive. I don't know that you should put in the work that it's going to require for this because this person is just beyond redemption as far as their place in your life is. And what are those sort of red flags for things like that?
Sanchez: With any relationship, both people have to be committed to wanting to change or to grow. We see this in couples, we see this in friendships, we see this in siblings. If only one person is trying to resolve the problem, you're talking to a wall. Nothing is going to change in that moment. But that doesn't mean that nothing will ever change. In my work, we have something that's called stages of change when someone is ready, and sometimes people are in the pre-contemplative stage. When they're just thinking about whether they're ready for a change or not. You want someone to be in more in the action stage for that. So what this looks like for individuals with families, if you find that you set a boundary, and you set a boundary, and you set a boundary, and it's continuously disrespected, you have to find a different way to set this boundary for yourself.
Sanchez: You know, if I live 20 minutes away from my mom, she shows up at my place every night for dinner. And while I would enjoy that food every day and love it, I need some boundaries and space. So if she can't respect that and this is a relationship that's important for me to maintain, then instead I will look and see what are my other options? Maybe that means moving a little bit further away, maybe that means not letting her have an extra key. There's a lot of different steps along the way, but I wouldn't say that there's a hard red flag for anything because everyone has such a different capacity for forgiveness. And that really depends on how much pain an individual caused you and how much willingness you have to forgive them. But that varies individual by individual.
Lantigua: Thank you so much. This has been fantastic. Please come back. All right. Here's what we learned from Dr. Lisette today. Notice unhelpful patterns. The first step to breaking a negative cycle is self-awareness. This will help you pause before reacting and realize you have a voice and a choice. Recognize early triggers. These emotional, mental, and even physical reactions can be helpful signals that your values are conflicting with your needs. And remember, start with you. Working on yourself by going to therapy and prioritizing your own healing is not selfish. In fact, it's a necessary step for community healing.
Thank you as always for listening and for sharing us. How to Talk to Mami and Papi About Anything is an original production of LWC studios. But Virginia Lora is the show's producer. Kojin Tashiro is our mixer. Manuela Bedoya is our marketing lead. I'm the creator, Juleyka Lantigua. On Twitter and Instagram, we're at Talk to Mami Papi. Bye everybody, same place next week.
CITATION:
Lantigua, Juleyka, host. “She's Opening Up to Mamí For the First Time”
How to Talk to [Mamí & Papí] about Anything,
LWC Studios., May 9, 2022. TalkToMamiPapi.com.