Migration Grief and Intergenerational Trauma

Immigrant clients and children of immigrants rarely walk in naming grief. They come in talking about guilt they cannot shake, a sense of never quite belonging, distance from family or homeland, or a low, hard-to-locate sadness that follows them across roles and relationships. Underneath those experiences, the losses of migration are often doing quiet work.

Join Taiwanese American clinical psychologist Dr. Jenny Wang for a clinically grounded conversation about the grief migration leaves behind, the kind that spans lineage, culture, and identity, and how to treat it as trauma rather than a client's failure to adjust.

IN THIS CONVERSATION, WE WILL EXPLORE:

• How migration grief takes shape across generations, from the person who left a homeland to the child raised inside that loss
• Why guilt, perfectionism, and a sense of not belonging are frequently grief and trauma responses rather than personality traits or resistance
• How to recognize migration loss in the room when a client presents with anxiety, disconnection, or an ache they cannot name
• Ways to help clients grieve what was left behind while honoring the survival choices their families made
• How cultural messages about silence, duty, and achievement shape what an immigrant client feels able to bring into session
• How this lens deepens the trauma therapist training you already bring to complex, intergenerational cases