What is Microaggressive Trauma for Asian Americans?
Microaggressive trauma describes the excessive and continuous exposure to subtle interpersonal and systemic discrimination that leads to trauma symptoms like sensitivity to threat, anxiety, and hyperarousal. Here is a related blog post that dives into what racial trauma is and the four levels of racism.
Microaggressions faced by Asian Americans
What are some common microaggressions faced by Asian Americans? It can be helpful to look at microaggressions for Asian Americans through the intersection of gender because different gendered stereotypes can determine whether an individual is seen as hyper-prototypical or hypo-prototypical for their group.
For example, here are some major types of microaggressions that Asian American women, men, and nonbinary or transgender individuals face in their lives.
According to researchers, gendered racial microaggressions for Asian American women include:
The ascription of submissiveness
Assumption of universal appearance
Asian fetishism
Media invalidation
Sexual objectification (such as catching someone leering at one’s body) and sexism (such as workplace discrimination based on identity as a woman) were directly linked with PTSD trauma symptoms for Asian women.
Meanwhile, Asian American men face microaggressions surrounding:
Psychological emasculation
Perceived undesirable partner
Perceived lack of leadership
Finally, transgender and nonbinary Asian Americans face unique gender identity microaggressions, such as:
Exoticization
Discomfort with or disapproval of the transgender experience
Assumption of sexual pathology or abnormality
Denial of individual transphobia
Denial of bodily privacy
Therapy
How does this affect therapy? This means that it is doubly important that you feel validated by the reality of racism and microaggressions as a constant, potentially traumatic stressor in your life, in therapy. Otherwise, therapists risk blaming our patients for trauma symptoms that are a result of real, external factors like racism.
It can also be helpful to work with your therapist to identify and make explicit the oftentimes implicit ways that racism sneaks up in our lives and affects our mental health. Here are some posts that explain various trauma symptoms, such as somatic effects, dissociation, and the four trauma responses.
What do I do now?
If you feel that you are needing support healing from racial trauma, there are many steps you can take to start. You can book a free consultation with our therapist matchmaker to explore online individual (CA residents only) therapy for racial trauma. You can also educate yourself through psychoeducational books and seek social support through BIPOC or allied communities.
These blogs talk more about the basics of EMDR:
You can read more about Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy here:
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