治愈一个家庭，从治愈父母的焦虑和创伤开始
Healing the Whole Family
GRACE CHIANG
2020年9月25日
The night I submitted my college applications, I lay in bed and stared out my window for hours. I prayed to the moon that I would die soon. On paper, I looked perfect (at least to the adults who told me so): a perfect SAT score in one try, three perfect SAT II subject tests, 10 perfect AP tests, recipient of national awards, president of various clubs, avid volunteer, and founder of an education nonprofit. But I would rather have died than learn that “perfect” was still not enough to get into the colleges I’d set my sights on.
递交大学申请那天晚上，我躺在床上，盯着窗外看了好几个小时。我向月亮祈祷，希望自己赶快死掉。从纸面上看，我似乎很完美（至少大人们是这么说的）：第一次参加SAT就拿了满分，三次SAT II科目考试满分，10次AP考试满分，国家奖项获得者，各种俱乐部主席，热心志愿者，以及一个非营利教育机构的创始人。但如果“完美”也不足以令我进入心仪的大学，我宁可死了算了。
I didn’t know there were illnesses called depression and anxiety, and the adults around me never suspected, because I looked like I was on top of my life. When I would burst into tears, my father would shout at me to stop crying because, “No one is dead — save your tears for when I die.” And when I told my mom of my suicidal thoughts her first response was, “How can you be so selfish?” I felt unworthy of their love until I was perfect beyond reproach.
当时我不知道抑郁和焦虑也是疾病，身边的大人也从未怀疑，因为我看似正值人生巅峰。如果我突然大哭，父亲就会大吼着让我别哭，因为“没有人死，等我死了你再哭。”我告诉妈妈我有自杀的想法，她的第一反应是，“你怎么这么自私？”我觉得自己不值得他们爱，除非我完美到无可挑剔的程度。
I attended Yale as a first-generation student supported through financial aid, worked at McKinsey in New York and London, and received two master’s degrees from Stanford. My fears of not being good enough for college seem unfounded now, but perhaps understandable given my upbringing.
我以接受资助的第一代学生身份入读耶鲁大学，曾在纽约和伦敦的麦肯锡工作，在斯坦福大学获得两个硕士学位。我那时担心自己不够资格上大学，现在看来似乎毫无根据，但考虑到我的成长经历，这或许可以理解。
Contrary to the stereotype of Asian Ivy League students, I did not have wealthy tiger nor snowplow parents. My extended family in Taiwan barely received an education, so in high school I was already among the most educated in my family.
与亚裔常春藤盟校生的刻板印象相反，我的父母既不是富有的虎爸虎妈，也不是扫雪机式家长。我在台湾的大家族里几乎没什么人受过教育，所以在高中时，我就已经是家里受教育程度最高的人之一。
What I did have are parents who, like many others, came into parenthood with their own wounds — and no knowledge of how to deal with them.
而我的父母确实和很多人一样，带着自己的创伤成为了父母，却不知如何处理这些创伤。
According to the Harvard team that developed the Adverse Childhood Experiences score (ACE), an instrument to measure childhood trauma, high ACE scores often correlate to challenges later in life, “because of the toxic stress it creates.”
哈佛大学研究小组开发了一种测量童年创伤的工具——童年不良经历评分（Adverse Childhood Experiences，简称ACE），他们认为，在ACE中获得高分往往与日后生活中的挑战有关，“因为它会产生有毒的压力。”
Studies conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser found that people with an ACE score of 4 or higher (about 12.5 percent of the population) increase their likelihood of chronic disease by 390 percent, depression by 460 percent, and attempted suicide by 1,220 percent.
疾病控制和预防中心(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)和凯泽(Kaiser)的研究发现，得分在4分或更高的人（约占人口的12.5%）患慢性疾病的可能性会增加390%，患抑郁症的可能性会增加460%，试图自杀的可能性会增加122%。
My parents both score above 4; my mother has a score of 7. Raised by neglectful, physically and emotionally abusive parents, my parents had scars they dared not uncover even for themselves to see. No one had taught them to address those traumas and avoid repeating them through anxiety-filled parenting.
我的父母都在4分以上；妈妈得了7分。他们从小被父母忽视，在身体和情感上都受到虐待，他们心中的伤疤连自己都不敢揭开来看。没有人教过他们如何解决这些创伤，教他们避免充满焦虑的育儿方式，不再让孩子重蹈自己的覆辙。
I cannot remember a time when my home was worry-free. I learned early that a moment without worry was a moment wasted in idleness. Research shows that depression and anxiety can be passed from parent to child when children observe their parents’ incessant worries and adopt similar thought patterns for themselves.
在我印象中，家里从来没有无忧无虑的时刻。我很早就懂得，无忧无虑就等于虚度光阴。研究表明，孩子会观察到父母在不停地忧虑，并且自行采取类似的思维模式，这样抑郁和焦虑就从父母传递给了孩子。
Most parents — including mine — are trying their best, but few have been taught much about how to raise kids beyond their own experience, with their own parents.
大多数父母——包括我的父母——都在尽自己最大的努力，但很少有人学会如何超越自身同父母相处的经验，去抚养自己的孩子。
My family had to learn the hard way that what we don’t heal, we repeat. When my grandmother, the woman who single-handedly raised my mother and her three sisters, died in my freshman year of college, my mother chose to “get on with” her life, focusing on raising my brother. For years after, my brother struggled with his weight and academics to the point of near expulsion from school.
我的家人不得不从惨痛的教训中认识到，那些未经治愈的东西只能一再重复。我的外婆在我大学一年级时去世，她曾一手将我母亲和她的三个姊妹抚养成人，她去世后，母亲选择“继续”自己的生活，专心抚养我的弟弟。此后几年里，弟弟一直与超重和学业作斗争，差点被学校开除。
In my mother’s search for ways to help my brother, she was exposed to the work of Virginia Satir, a pioneer in family therapy. Ms. Satir saw each family as a system, so if you change one node, the whole system changes. My mother began to process her own grief and trauma.
在母亲寻找帮助弟弟的方法时，她接触到家庭疗法的先驱维吉尼亚·萨提尔(Virginia Satir)的作品。萨提尔把每个家庭看作一个系统，所以如果你改变一个节点，整个系统就会改变。母亲开始处理她自己的悲伤和创伤。
So did I.
我也是这样。
During college, I sought counseling and studied wellness. I began to meditate and journal to untangle my past from the present. In my last year of college, I finally told my family that I had seen a therapist. And that it had helped.
在大学期间，我寻求咨询，学习健康知识。我开始通过冥想和日记来理清自己的过去和现在。在大学最后一年，我终于告诉家人我去看了心理医生。而且这对我很有帮助。
My family was surprised (to say the least) when they learned my mental health challenges were “bad enough” to lead me to seek help. It was hard on my parents, who are part of a generation focused on survival rather than wellness, to hear how their parenting impacted me. They reacted first with ridicule, then fear at the realization that their own wounds were deep enough to hurt me as well.
家人得知我的心理健康问题“严重到”足以导致我寻求帮助时，他们（至少可以说）非常惊讶。我的父母是注重生存而非健康的那一代人，听到他们的养育方式对我产生了怎样的影响，让他们觉得很难受。他们先是嘲笑我，然后又感到恐惧，因为他们意识到他们自己的伤口很深，足以让我也受到伤害。
It took much time and effort for my parents to shift away from the mentality they had grown up with.
父母花了很多时间和精力，才转变了他们从小到大就有的那种心态。
Years into the journey, my mother now runs a nonprofit teaching thousands of Mandarin-speaking parents about conscious communication and mindfulness.
多年后，我母亲现在经营着一个非营利组织，向数以千计说普通话的父母传授关于有意识沟通和心态的知识。
Recently, at a workshop my mom was hosting, I heard my dad tell a participating parent, “I didn’t believe in therapy until Grace told me it’s like going to the dentist for a cavity, which makes a lot of sense to me now. Watching my family learn helped me see that I have some growing to do too.”
最近，在妈妈主持的一个研讨会上，我听到爸爸对一个参与的家长说，“我以前不相信心理治疗，后来格蕾丝告诉我，这就和找牙医看蛀牙一样，现在我觉得很有道理。看着家人的学习，我明白了我也需要成长。”
Advocating for parents to understand mental health, both theirs and their children’s, feels more relevant now than ever.
如今，提倡父母理解自己和孩子的心理健康比以往任何时候都更有意义。
Lately, I’ve heard from many parents who worry about how this pandemic season of uncertainty will impact their child’s school year and college applications. These are important questions, of course.
最近，我收到许多家长的来信，他们担心这个充满不确定的大流行季节会对孩子的学年和大学申请产生什么影响。当然，这些都是重要的问题。
Yet, as I watch my brother apply for college this fall, I can’t help but imagine how many students are lying by their windows, praying to the moon. And I wish, if parents realized how heavily their worries and old wounds weighed on their children, they would pause and tend first to their anxieties.
然而，当我看着弟弟今年秋天申请大学时，我不禁想象会有多少学生正躺在窗前，对着月亮祈祷。我希望，如果父母们意识到自己的忧虑和过去的创伤给孩子们带来了多么沉重的负担，他们会停下来，首先处理一下自己的焦虑。
