Aging holds potential for being as big of a mind f*** as going through puberty.
But, I'm getting ahead of myself... or roll with it and Jump to My Letter for Mixed-race Millennials without any context. Up to you! xo
Physical Appearance is Social Capital for us all, Aging Mixed-race Millennial or not
Just imagine our tiny underdeveloped infant brains absorbing environmental data and patterns that associate survival needs with whom provide them, what they sound like, smell like, and once we're able, what they look like.
Throughout childhood, repeated exposure to the looks of caregivers vs ourselves and others outside of the home lead us to make subconscious generalization about appearances representative of power, privilege, and belonging, vs. those representative of the powered over, oppressed, and labeled as 'outsiders.'
As a Millennial, general parenting education for our parents didn't include stuff like this, so if and when we realized that mixed-race appearances (or any other visually marginalizable identity intersections) would produce giant question marks in peoples eyes about us, we naturally started to see them in our own reflections too.
Now, this is where implicit racial biases come in, sometimes perceived for privilege, other times for oppression.
Implicit Racial Biases we all have
Everyone has racial bias. Harvard even has this free Racial, Implicit Associations Test you can try yourself.
However, research has focused less on biracial and mixed race/ ethnic appearances.
But, the other day I came across this article, which oddly rubbed me in the wrong way, as I was also thinking about my birthday and the general meaning of what aging means to me.
Self-perceptions of Aging 'gracefully' or adaptively?
Aging inevitably triggers an awareness of natural changes, seemingly out of our control, that impact how we perceive ourselves: physical appearance, social status, future goals, esteemed abilities, and running achievement lists.
In western cultures, we have a hyperawareness towards the ‘losses’ associated with aging appearances, bodies, and abilities. Internalized beliefs suggest aging comes with more and more red tape to how we’ll continue experiencing our external realities, whilst on journeys to pause, stop, or turn back and preserve the internal realities we want to experience them with.
It’s a problem, and a particularly hard one to navigate for those who’ve experienced mixed-race/ cultural oppression, while becoming socialized to western views of aging AND at least one other, (hopefully) more aging positive culture’s view of it.
Coming of Aging as a Mixed-race Millennial
The confounding effects of subtle traumatic self-beliefs collected over time, without specifically traumatic events, can culminate into complex trauma responses.
This is actually way more commonly occurring than people realize (identity trauma or identity development trauma) and most commonly an experience for individuals with one or multiple marginalized identities.
I believe it's because they have seemingly less privilege to multiple of the five basic emotional needs- belonging, power, freedom, spontaneity, survival security- so more or less consciously structure lifestyle and choices around compensating for them, by placing significantly more value in efforts to bolster the others.
For instance, if cultural and/or physical appearance ever made you feel like you didn't belong or couldn't fully connect with the peers around you, you may have learned to strongly rely on identifying with personal abilities, achievements, mastery, and pleasing others, to create a more controllable sense of self, that others would want to associate themselves with.
Things get more complicated though when you being noticing signs of aging and start forming self-perceptions of aging as a mixed-race millennial, with a fragile sense of self-concept founded on the trauma bonded process above.
Anyway, I wrote the following letter based on my personal experiences as a Biracial Female Millennial, and professional experiences as an EMDR, Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) System and Attachment-focused Complex Trauma Therapist in hopes of helping others better understand their lived experiences as aging Mixed-race millennials heading down a similar path to me.
So, here's a rundown of how lived experiences might've shaped you into the mixed person you are today (self-concept), and where the same patterns of algorithmic learning might be taking you, IF you continue to brush them aside as life goes on.
Dear Millennial Mixed Person like me,
I think we’re about to be experiencing what people may call a stage of ‘youthful aging.’
I'd like to imagine this opportunity would make us feel like goddesses, because if you're familiar with the general perception people tend to have on the slower appearance of aging in different racial and ethnic stereotypes, you’ll understand how any non-mixed person could see our trauma-bonded 'trademarks' as ‘blessings.' And heck- on the surface, our realistically
Aging, ambiguous-looking physical appearances might really feel like blessings!.... At least for a period of time
in which I'd say we should approach openly, but extremely cautiously. Why?
The same social constructs that led us to originally internalize our mixed looks for heathenism, will be the ones delegating their ethereal-seeming, yet fickly value as we being to age.
Due to the above, you might want to expect that your subconscious & somatic memory systems will still remember the more traumatic messages you internalized from the past.
The following is a list of ways in which memory networks of reflexive feeling self/ other learning was, and may continue to be, internalized over time to negatively impact our qualities of life, aspirations, self-images, and senses of self-efficacy as we age:
1). Insecure Attachment & Self Image Messages
Early physical appearance learning was not meaningful in a positive way for you
2). Non-belonging Trauma Response- Adaptive dev. of Disorganized Attachments
Feeling non-belong due to internalized attention to looks motivated you to develop strong attachments to things within your control, for better and worse: addiction risk factor
3). Trauma response is reinforced and becomes more intertwined sense of Self and Identity
Self-control and hard work made you feel more like a motivational success story that people would want to feel a sense of connection with, and gravitate towards
4). Helplessness Trauma Response- Under or completely Unrecognized form of Dissociation
Strong attachments to control may have led to outbursts of freedom or compensatory behaviors with instant gratification vibes, for which an exhausted sense of self-control could take a back seat to: binge eating, drinking, hoarding, picking, volatile hobbies, or testing limits of the body, law, and relationships
5). Disorganized Attachment Learning resulting in Trust Issues
Lifetime of trust issues in self (for sure) and potentially with other individuals, groups, or systemic approaches, based on reinforced memory network pathways, relaying info related to themes interconnected belonging, worth, ability, and identity
6). Triggered Slight to Value System you built as an OG trauma response to early, insecure att. learning being a Mixed Persons
When your ‘mixed looks’—once seen as making you an outsider—become praised as social capital with the onset of a generation’s coming of age…ing, it’s natural to feel both validated and bitter, not at individuals, but at the fickle system that dictates value.
7). Trauma bond choice: Maintain Belonging [Non-belonging Trauma] at the cost of achievement-valuing Identity [Helplessness Trauma], or vice versa
As aging slowly impacts abilities, your value system putting them on a pedestal and the strong sense of community form around it all may feel threatened, making you more vulnerable to forming reliances on physical appearance for instant, but temporary, validation and belonging
The thing is, Minimizing these impacts would be to Self-Gaslight.
As a biracial Complex Trauma Therapist with my own past trauma, I urge you, Mixed Persons noticing their aging like me, pay more attention to complex emotions, even in mundane situations. Ignoring will reinforce chronic self-invalidation, keeping us all trapped in trauma-bonded cycles of what we might presume to be with just control and freedom (where still, the odds are never in our favor), but occurs within a foundation of internalized socio-cultural ‘otherness,’ or non-belong trauma from being of ambiguous-looking descent.
If simply being aware of these patterns isn’t enough to break free from them, I encourage you to explore Complex Trauma Therapy. It has the potential to enhance your quality of life, allowing for more authenticity, longevity, or both—just as it did for me and continues to do for my clients.
Sounds bleak, but your alternative might look like having a secretly vulnerable sense of self (due to aging’s effects on what you can control) subconsciously assign too much internalized value to new, more comfortable, circumstantial meanings of the very traits, now youthfully aging- that landed you in this this complex traumatic bond to searching for a more secure sense of self and belonging in the first place.
Contrary to popular belief, trauma therapies aren’t just for the most horrific events. They were created for those situations but can also effectively treat the complex, internalized beliefs we carry—whether or not they stem from tragic experiences.
Personally, EMDR Therapy is what worked for me to achieve what I would professional consider today to be the healthfully functioning sense of identity integration I’ve always felt was missing.
Millennial Mixed Person, Surviving is Not Living
We can choose to stop, take a break to reprocess meanings of all the maladaptive, socialized learning patterns the got us here, and then move forward in building the authentically fulling lives and senses of connection, self, and legacy we’ve deserved from the beginning.
So here’s a promise less empty than all the anti-aging beauty fads out there: There 100% is a more integrative and adaptive path for YOU, that’ll guide all parts of YOU towards living the quality of life YOU choose, whether through EMDR Therapy or not.
Be inspired to seek multiculturally competent professional help, not the kind informed by a subjugated educational curriculum on multiple cultures’ isms; rather the kind that knows what it’s actually like to be and live in the gray areas of what is Mixed Culture.
With personal & professional understanding,
Carolyn
Carolyn L. Downes, LPC, LCMHC, LMHC
a Passionate Mixed Persons & Complex Trauma Therapist with past trauma
EMDR Certified Therapist
VA-0701013495 | NC- #17954 I FL- MH20264 | RI-MHC01624
Published Journal Articles:
Lewis MB. Why are mixed-race people perceived as more attractive? Perception. 2010;39(1):136-8. doi: 10.1068/p6626. PMID: 20301855.
Yin, Jing. (2011). Popular Culture and Public Imaginary: Disney Vs. Chinese Stories of Mulan. Javnost - The Public. 18. 53-74. 10.1080/13183222.2011.11009051.
Zamora TI, Padilla AM. Making sense of conflicting messages of multiracial identity: a systematic review. Front Psychol. 2024 Apr 25;15:1307624. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1307624. PMID: 38725948; PMCID: PMC11079233.
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