Claudia Chan

While growing up, I never showed my anger, because whenever I responded angrily at something, I would get yelled at.

“Why are you angry about this? I should be the one who’s angry!”

So I had to stuff down my anger, believing that I have no right to be angry.

And I see this so often in my clients, they either believe that anger is not good, or they don’t have a right to be angry.

And sometimes, I‘d hear people say, “I don’t know why I’m so angry all the time, what can I do to make it go away?”

Or “I’d been working on my anger, but I still feel so much of it in me, I’m so tired of this.”

And this is what I always say:

Being angry is ok.

We’d been conditioned to believe that being angry is not ok. Something’s wrong us when we’re angry.

But when we don’t let our emotions come out, it boils over, and sometimes it affects the people around us, like we have a bad temper around our kids, and they don’t want to be close to us.

So what can we do about it?

Simply allow it to come out without shaming it.

It’s ok to feel angry.

Now of course, we don’t want to direct this anger at anyone. So please find a safe spot where you are alone.

And allow yourself to scream, yell, curse, or say whatever you need it out of your system.

If you want, you may also allow yourself to hit a pillow, hit the bed, or hit something that is not breakable.

And after the screaming, it may turn into tears, it may turn into sadness, or you may feel better.

Just let yourself feel all the emotions.

Once you’d given yourself plenty of time to let it out, then you can ask yourself, “what do I need to move forward”?

And then do that, or get that fulfilled.
You may find you’ll have more patience with others and with yourself once you have let your anger out.
Find it intriguing? Give it a try, and let me know how it feels afterwards, would love to hear about your experience.

“I don’t want to do it, but I feel so guilty if I don’t.”

This is the response I often hear from my clients, when their parents force their kids to take care of them, or do what they say.​

It sounds so heartless when I tell them, you’re not responsible for your parents.​

And yet, it is the most beautiful thing for a person, which is to be free from this “obligation”. And here’s why.

Because we’re raised in a “transactional” world, and never know the true meaning of free will.

Often times, there is an invisible price placed on us when other people do something for us, or give something to us. Like a parent taking care of a child.

Yet, the highest form of love, or the main reason for us to give, is because we want to, because we love that person. And this comes from our heart. In other words, there is no expectation of receiving anything back.

But because of generational trauma, man-made values and “obligations”, it ends up being a form of exchange, which creates a painful bind between parents and kids.

“I’d given you this much, because I love you, so now, it’s your turn to show me you love me, by taking care of me, being responsible of me. And if you don’t do that, shame on you! That means you don’t love me!”​
One of our “highest” virtues in the Chinese culture, Filial Piety.

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Sadly this is where manipulations start: crying, yelling, threatening to kill oneself, shaming, rejecting, etc.

How can you be so heartless for not taking care of me? For not paying for me? For not spending time with me?

​So we are held hostage physically, emotionally, psychologically, financially.

​When this freedom of choice is taken away, resentment and guilt enter the relationship.

​How is this our responsibility, when we never asked to be born in the first place?

​This unfairness turns love into bitterness.

​And when the child didn’t get their opportunity to choose, they carry this obligation onto the next generation.

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And the toxic cycle continues.

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So how do you break it?

It is through being “heartless”.​

When one generation can be “selfish” and tend to their own needs, wants, desires first and foremost, when they can be happy.

​Then they will come back to you and give you their love.

​Then they can carry that forward and allow their kids to be free, loving, happy.

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And it takes a lot of courage, because it will be met with a lot of criticism, judgement, rejection.

​So the question is, are you willing to do it for you? Even if your parents walk out on you? Even if your relatives belittle you? Even if your brain doubts you?

To go for what you want in life, so that you’re happier to give back when your cup is full.

Ready to do this for you? Book a free 20-min consult with me so you can bring your love and happiness back, and in turn, make changes in your family.

While I was in my 20s, I was in a “rebellious” phase, where every weekend, I was pretty much out doing something with my friends.

Mostly dancing.

And once I started dating people, my mom was mad because the people I was with weren’t guys she approved of​.

And she would always say things like, you’re never home, you treat home like a hotel, you don’t care about spending time with me, you’re selfish, you don’t care about me, who are these people you’re dating, you don’t respect me, etc.

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And if you know me and my story, I had to fight against my mom when it came to being with my now husband.

And I see so many of these scenarios on Reddit and in real life. “My mom is crying and yelling! And I don’t want to see her heartbroken because I love her.”

“I’m tired of her controlling me, what can I do?”
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So these were a few things I had to really learn:

1 I’m not responsible for her emotions: pain, disappointment, shame, etc.

2 If I don’t follow what she said, it doesn’t mean I don’t love her

3 I’m not a bad daughter for following my heart.

And 4, which is the hardest, I have to allow her to express her feelings through her body, which may include developing into panic attacks, or other illnesses… and it’s not my fault.

I know for some people, their moms might say things like, “I am going to kill myself!”, or “How can I live like this? I’d rather die!”

And it’s a lot to deal with, esp when it is life or death situation.

I’m not saying what they’re feeling is not real. I’m sure if I was in their shoes, I’d also experience the extreme pain, disappointment, and it’d probably feel like the end of the world. Because they’d probably lived their whole lives envisioning their kids turning out in a specific way. And then all of a sudden, their kids (me), threw a wrench in there.

A future of possibilities, expectations, dreams. And all of a sudden, 🔧 shattered.
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I understand that.

But understanding that, doesn’t mean I have to follow through with that.

They have lived their lives. They made their decisions for themselves.

And I have my life to live. Just as my son has his life to live.

So I had to learn to separate my pain from her pain. Her pain is hers to deal with, my pain is mine to deal with. I had to learn to bear through my own pain and fear, and let her work through hers in her own way.

And there is nothing I can do about it.

​Most times, with a parent a child, our lives are so entangled that we sometimes feel as if we are one.

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So the first step is to realize that there are two, and we have to learn to separate them.

I saw this video and I wanted to cry, both for the mom and the son.

Have a watch.
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I’d love to hear what comes up for you, hit reply and let me know.

And send me a message or book a free 20-min consult with me if you want to work through separating your life from your parents’. Because you deserve to live for you.

Recently, I see so many of these stories:

My parents are against me dating my other half.

My parents keep saying that I’m selfish for not taking care of my siblings.

My parents are forcing me to give up on going on this trip.

My parents are dictating that I can only marry someone from within the culture.

My parents are yelling at me non stop for wanting to move away.

My parents are ignoring me, and they’d stopped talking to me because I am wearing something they don’t like.

My parents said they’re not going to show up to my wedding if I don’t invite the people they want to invite.

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻

F-you parents.

I want to scream! What the heck is wrong with you???

And yet, I understand how much pain everyone is carrying.

All those times the parents never got a chance to choose what they wanted.

All those times they got hurt, either physically, emotionally, psychologically when they exercised their rights.

All those times they were shamed and pushed away for forging their own paths.

All those times they were forced to sacrifice and give up their dreams for someone else.

All those times when their dreams got crushed by someone else.

All those times when they were forced to follow in the footsteps of society.

All those times when they were angry and resentful at others, and themselves, because they decided to give up on themselves and followed someone else’s suggestions.

All those times when their own freedom were taken away by someone else.
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It is a lot of pain.

I am now working with this one coach to help me let go of the negative emotions from my past experiences.

And one of the events I worked on was when I was born, my grandma (dad’s mom) gave my boy cousin, who was born 3 months before me, a gold chain, while she said that my penis fell off, and gave me a $10 red pocket.

I had a lot of questions for her, I allowed myself to share what was on my mind.

And afterwards, I was asked to listen to what she has to say. One of the things I heard was that she didn’t know better. She said that she was not educated, and she couldn’t “see” the truth about what society has done to her. She said she was sorry for all the pain it has caused her daughters and granddaughters. And she said that she’s so proud of me, for standing up for our family and our lineage.

I know full well we cannot change others. All this time, other people want to change us, and we don’t want that, we don’t like that.

And if we don’t want them to change us, then we cannot change them. So we have to take our own lives into our own hands.

Now, it is the time.

Because it’s so frustrating to feel stuck.

Because it is taking so much of our emotional and mental capacity.

Because it’s so tiring and it feels so lonely to be fighting this fight on our own.

And I am here to help those who want to stand for themselves, and walk through this chaos.

So you can live a life where you can say what you want, do what you want, even when other people hate you, criticize you, take you down, walk away from you.

So hop on a free 20-min consult with me now, because there is only one you, and you are here to live as you, not as someone else’s version of you.

When our children are young, I totally understand that it’s important to instil a sense of responsibility into them. Teach them what it means to help out, so they can take care of themselves.

I have a 7 yo son, I do want him to be more independent, so that he is capable of looking after himself when he grows up.
Now what I’d like to talk about is this:

The idea that parents giving birth to their child (or children), and then expecting them to take care of them and the other siblings.

I totally believe that when parents give birth to their kids, they shouldn’t expect their kids to be responsible for them and their siblings.

😮😮😮😮 “Claudia, how can you be so selfish!!”

I know, even writing this out, a part of me feels guilty because it sounds selfish.

Here is the thing: I love my parents, I appreciate that they had given up so much for me, to raise me, so that I can grow into who I am today.

And if anything happens to them, of course I will do all that I can to be there for them.

And I acknowledge that I am extremely privileged, my parents had the ability to save enough money, and had the capacity to raise me in a way that I never had to go to work while studying, and I didn’t have to borrow money to finish school.

And they are in a healthy financial situation where I don’t actually have to worry about them.

And I know that there are many people who don’t have that luxury.

And, this is also a true story, where my grandma (dad’s mom) expected my dad, the eldest of five) to leave school to work, so that he had to earn money to take care of his siblings. (And it was his godmother who encouraged him to take night school, so that he had the qualification). Then my grandma indicated that my uncle (the second son), that he had to financially care for her and my grandfather once he completed school and found a job.

So often, I see that parents give birth to kids, because they put an expectation on their elder kids to take on the “parent’s job”. In this case, either being a financial help, or take care of other siblings in the household. (I even saw it on Super Nanny!! 🤯🤯🤯🤯)

This puts so much strain on the kids, on the siblings.

So that’s why I caution moms I work with, to become aware of the type of expectations they placed on themselves, and on their kids.

Just because you gave birth to them, just because you’re their mother, your kids are not obligated to take care of you, or your other kids.

You gave birth to them, they didn’t ask to be born.

Parenting is your job, giving birth to your kids is your choice; so they are your responsibility, not theirs.

If your kids end up taking care of you, and taking care of their siblings, it could be either they have this invisible weight of “they have to”, which breeds resentment, or they really want to because they love you.

So please don’t take it for granted.
And to end this post,

I saw this video of Mel Robbins interviewing her 18 yo son. I want to share this part, where his headmaster was speaking to the parents in his school. It was really good, so I have to share it,

It’s about parent’s roles in their kids’ lives.

Starts at 20:18

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Do you agree? Disagree? send me a reply!

So I was scrolling through social media, and one of the teachers I followed shared a post.

It was about one of the mothers he was working with, and the mom shared the following:

When I had my younger daughter, my older son seemed to have regressed. He would poke or hit the sister, whine, act up, hide the sister’s toys, make her cry, etc. Those things I wasn’t too worried about. But what I am worried about, is that one night, he said to me, “After you put her to sleep, can you hug me?”

Her heart went into knots, she felt a bit sad, but didn’t understand why he said that.

So the teacher went on to explain how when the older child regress, or if they’re acting up, it’s because they feel neglected, and they’re trying to do things that would get the parents attention.

If you know how to read Chinese, ​this is the article​. He suggested a few things parents can do. (just a quick summary if you aren't able to read Chinese, and if you do read Chinese, I might have gotten some of the meanings wrong, because my Chinese sucks, so I translated it how I understood it. So if you see any mistakes, please let me know.)

1 When the elder one act up, make sure to spend alone time with them.

2 When they're causing trouble, start off to let them know you love them first, and then help them decipher between good and bad.

3 Ensure you give them some alone time every day.

4 Ensure you give them hugs, so that they know hugs are not just for the younger siblings.

5 Everyday, give 3 positive feedbacks to the eldest one.

6 When they fight, make sure to take care of the emotions first, and then go into reasons

7 When the siblings fight, make sure you hear both sides.

8 Give some chores to the eldest, so they feel they can help take care of the family, and praise them (I personally feel that this is not the best advice, because the parents may become too dependent on the eldest, which may cause a lot of resentment.)

9 Guide the eldest so they can become a team with their siblings.

10 When the eldest regress, don't get mad at them or make fun of them, just let them know that "we like the original you", and then guide them back to their original self.

But today's post, is not about this.

Because what I’d like to talk about is this one tool: the Law of Mirroring.

And it is an amazing tool to see a clearer picture when it comes to relationships.

You can use this mirror to get to know yourself better, or get to know your spouse, children or other people better.

It’s called the Law of Mirroring, because you the idea is, what you see in other people is a mirror for you, this is where you can learn more about how the other person is feeling, based on what you’re feeling. (Or get to know what is really bothering you when someone does something that makes you feel an emotion).

So for example, just from reading about that mother’s experience, when her older son was hiding the sister’s toy, or trying to make her cry, what do you think the mom feels?

If I’m that mom, I’d be super frustrated and upset because, WHY ARE YOU NOT LISTENING TO ME!

This is where the mirror comes in, because the son doesn’t have the ability to speak and tell his mom he’s frustrated. So he does things to make the mom feel how he feels.

(Also he’s trying to do something that would also get his mom’s attention, because getting yelled at (a negative attention), is better than not getting any attention)

He’s frustrated that he’s losing his mom’s love. He’s upset that he’s no longer the favourite. He feels like he’s no longer important and that he’s not being seen and heard. He's pretty much saying, "What are you not listening to me, paying attention to me!!"

So he did those things to make his mom feel how he feels.

So knowing this, I’d like to invite you to think back to an incident where you got upset with your kid(s), or someone else.

Try to think back to that situation, and see if you could identify your emotion.

Once you know what that feeling is, try to put yourself into your kid’s (or the other person's) shoes, and ask yourself, how is it that he/she feels this way?

Humm... Can you see that?

And now that you get more of an understanding out of this... , what would you like to do about it?

If you’re having difficulty identifying the emotion, or seeing how it applies to your kids (or the other person), reply to this email and send me your story. Maybe I can help.

I went to watch Deadpool and Wolverine yesterday with Anthony, my husband, yesterday.

If you don’t want to get any spoilers, I will do a quick summary of what I’m going to talk about here:

Sometimes, we may get upset or bogged down by our past experiences. We may think, if only my parents treated me this way. Or if only I was allowed to do this, life would be better.

But what’s most important is, those are the experiences that make up who we are, and get better to choose what to do next.

Because those past experiences are the very thing that make us see, this is why we need to do something different in our lives. So that we can rise above.

I would like to invite you to see that maybe those painful experiences happened because that is your obstacle for you to outcome yourself.

Maybe you’re ready to see more of this for you, or maybe you’re ready to change, and when you are, hop on a free 20-min consult with me, and we can move you along to where you want to go.

On this note, I’m going to share about the Deadpool & Wolverine movie, so if you would like to skip the spoilers, then I’d recommend you stop reading from here.

Oh btw, I don’t know about you, but I thought it was really funny when I first learned that Anthony hates spoilers.

I actually had no concept of what a spoiler is, because while growing up, my mom would always tell me what happened in the TV drama we watched together (cause sometimes I had to miss it), and I didn’t care too much for it.

So Anthony got so upset when I shared a spoiler with him, and he was like NOOOOOO! And I was like, what??

🤣🤣🤣

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I’m not going to share too much about the story of Deadpool & Wolverine with you.

But there was this one point where it really spoke to my heart.

The premise is, once again, there are many universes.

And Deadpool went to the various universes to bring back one Wolverine to help him save Deadpool’s universe from being destroyed.

But the Wolverine that Deadpool found was the “worst” version of all wolverines.

In Wolverine’s universe, Wolverine was unwilling to stand up and fight, he’d rather choose to go out and drink. One night while he went off drinking, the humans hunted down all the mutants and killed them. So he was filled with guilt and pain.

Deadpool made a promise, if Wolverine helps him, then after they saved Deadpool’s world, they can go back to Wolverine past to change the outcome.

Throughout the movie Wolverine had no interest or intention to help Deadpool, because he believed that “he’s the wrong guy.”

But he kept showing up and kept deciding to fight, over and over again.

Then at the end, after Deadpool and Wolverine killed the villain, Deadpool talked to the head chief of the Timeline (the organization that watches over the Timeline).

Deadpool asked if they could do something about Wolverine’s timeline.

And she said that (and I’m paraphrasing), it is because of his past that led him to where he is now. So nothing needs to be changed.

That!

Ohhhhhh!!

That is the one lesson I’d been learning.

And that is what I’m trying to get people to see.

So many times, I’d hold myself back from showing up.

I am too scared! If only my parents had supported me to “cultivate” my courage.

Or

When I see other people way ahead of me, I sometimes blame my parents.

If only they’d allowed me to do this, then I wouldn’t have wasted all this time and I could be further along!

If only I was able to do this, then…

If only other people had done that, then…

If only things are different in the past, then…

And I’d been learning to get out of this headspace of, if things were only different, then our lives would be better. (And I’m still doing it everyday! Because it is so easy to go back into)

But Wolverine needed to have all his mutant friends killed for Deadpool to find him, so he can go on this journey.

Sure, yes that is a movie.

And this is also life.

We needed to have those experiences in our past, in order to realize that we want something better.

Like I had to have my mom kept hitting me during my Gr 4 & 5 year, so that I learn what it means to show up while “scared of doing things ‘wrong’”.

Being scared and doing it anyway.

I needed to have my mom not support me being with my husband, so that I can stand for my own dreams and values.

And even more. Standing up for me, learning this for me, so I can help others stand for themselves.

All of those experiences made up who I am,

And I get to choose a different outcome every single minute, every single hour, every single day.

I mean if we could rewind time, I might have chosen to leave Anthony then, but I know for a fact that my journey is to stand for me. Not following my mom’s voice overpower me.

What it means is, I know I will come across another situation where I will head butt against my mom again. If not this issue, it’ll be another issue, because it’s always been this lesson all along.

To learn to stand and speak for me.

For some of us, it may be to love ourselves. So we may continue to encounter people who don’t love us, or who may continue to take advantage of us.

For others, it may be to take care of our bodies. So we may encounter situations where we found ourselves give and give until our bodies breaks down.

Have you ever been in a situation where you’re like, how is it I’m back “here” again?

May it be feeling like no one loves you, or gaining weight again, or mad at others for not respecting you.

Have you ever felt like, I’m sick and tired of dealing with this sh*t again!

Yeah..

Me.

I want you to know that there is a deeper message in your life, and it wants you to see and overcome.

Maybe you already know what the message is already, and you don’t know how to get over it.

Maybe you still don’t know and want to find out.

I am here for you.

Book a free 20-min consult call with me, and we can figure out what it is your life purpose is, and what you want to work on.

Because you are meant to overcome your past to live as who you’re meant to be.