Redefining Respect— Liberation From Unconditional Obedience

From a young age, we were taught that obedience is paramount. Obey your parents. Obey your elders. Obey your culture.

Whenever you obey, you get gold stars from your elders. These gold stars have protected us from the threat of abandonment and rejection from our elders. These gold stars have helped us survive in our families. This protective strategy of people pleasing and unconditional obedience worked for a long period of time. This strategy helped us to have a sense of peace and harmony within our family.

Let’s be honest. It was just an illusion of peace and harmony. It wasn’t the real deal. It might be hard to believe, but some of us have never experienced true peace and harmony in our families.

Fast forward to now. You are now in your mid 30s perhaps. Well respected in your career, however, feeling totally overwhelmed with your boss and colleagues adding things on your plate without your permission. Making your load heavier and heavier. Your people pleasing tendencies used to be directed towards your parents when you were younger, but now are directed towards your peers and superiors at work. You feel out of control with the amount of responsibilities you have at work. You can’t seem to come home and have dinner with your family at a decent time. If you do, you are compelled to work well into the late night hours.

What if I told you that your current overwhelm is the result of your unresolved overwhelm as a child? Your unresolved childhood part are unconsciously reenacting and replaying patterns from your past. Your blind obedience to authority alongside the suppression of your emotions in order to avoid conflict is causing you to be exhausted.

The fear of disappointing others, being judged by our community, fear of straining familial relationships weighs us down. We have been conditioned to believe that disobedience equals disrespect. The thought of challenging the status quo fills us with anxiety.

Despite the fear— there is a burning desire within us. The desire to have more choice. Independence. Self expression. We crave the freedom to make our own choices. To pursue our own passions. To carve out our own paths in life.

In order to break the chains of obedience, we need to confront parts of us that hold limiting beliefs that have been programmed within us since childhood.

What are these limiting beliefs?

1) “my superiors know what is best for me. I should’t question them”

2) “if I disobey my parents, they’ll be disappointed in me. I can’t risk upsetting them”

3) “I’m not smart enough to make important decisions in my life. I need others to tell me what to do.”

4) “I have to follow my parent’s wishes, even if it goes against what I want. I can’t bear to disappoint them.”

5) “It’s my duty to obey my parents without question. That’s just how our family works”

6) “in our culture, respecting elders is a core value. I can’t challenge that.”

7) “Following my parents’ rules gives me a sense of security and stability. I’d rather stick to what I know than making my own choices.”

What happens when we have internalized these beliefs?

We begin to see that we can’t trust our inner compass. That external authority figures are more wise than our intuition. We end up not taking risks. Risks that make our families uncomfortable.

The first step to healing means that we need to recognize the messages that we’ve been programmed with. Then begin to de-program ourselves. Also recognizing that these messages carry intense burdens. These burdens weigh heavy on our hearts. Healing means welcoming all of our parts, acknowledging the messages and the burdens they carry and then facilitating a release of those burdens.

keywords; Immigrant daughter people pleasing, Overcoming cultural expectations, Breaking free from obedience, Assertiveness skills for immigrant women, Establishing boundaries with family, Self-worth and immigrant culture, Healing from people pleasing, Cultural identity and assertiveness, Empowerment for eldest daughters of immigrants, Finding voice in immigrant families, executive coach Angela tam