Healing Parent–Adult Child Relationships: Kan Yan on Reframing, Responsibility, and Emotional Growth
How can adult children heal relationships with parents through emotional maturity, cultural understanding, and self-empathy?
Kan Yan, host of Parents Reimagined, about how adult children can heal, reframe, and redefine relationships with their parents. A Harvard-trained lawyer and former McKinsey consultant, Yan shares insights on intergenerational trauma, cultural identity, and emotional maturity—particularly within immigrant and Asian American families. He emphasizes shifting from an “adult–child” to an “adult-adult” relationship, the role of self-empathy in conflict resolution, and the uneven emotional capacities between parents and children. The conversation explores psychological development, cultural framing, and the importance of embracing past experiences to foster honest and respectful connections.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So today we’re here with Kan Yan. He is the host of Parents Reimagined, a podcast that shares authentic stories of healing and transformation in parent–adult-child relationships. Kan is a Harvard-trained lawyer and a former McKinsey consultant. He speaks and writes on topics including family estrangement, intergenerational trauma, and Asian American identity.
Based in Berkeley, California, Kan explores how immigrant families navigate cultural identity, boundaries, and reconciliation—particularly within the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. His work uplifts voices centred on reparenting, breaking cycles of fear and shame, and fostering connection without bypassing pain. Through Parents Reimagined, he offers practical tools for rebuilding relationships grounded in truth, accountability, and emotional healing. So what tends to make people feel most supported by their parents—and what can break that feeling of support?
Kan Yan: Supported. Are you talking about children or adults?
Jacobsen: Adult children.
Yan: Adult children. Wow, I might say that’s not quite the right question—because by the time you're asking it, a lot has already happened that determines whether or not someone feels supported. So I’d say, in general, there are maybe two phases.
Whether someone feels supported often depends on how their childhood went. For example, based on your story, if I were in your position, I might have some resentments or grievances toward my dad. And it can be tough to feel supported by someone toward whom you have unresolved resentment or pain.
That’s one phase of the relationship.
In my work with adult children, we focus on moving through those resentments and reaching a place of acceptance. That way, we can build an adult-adult relationship where I no longer expect my parent to have been the parents I needed as a child. Instead, I accept them for who they are now—with appropriate boundaries to ensure my needs are respected—and I explore what might still be possible in the relationship.
That might involve seeking support from them if they can provide it. And it might not.
Jacobsen: Now, in terms of a lot that has already happened in childhood—such that an adult child is asking this kind of question—what are some key signs that things went wrong earlier in life? What are the flipside indicators? That is when things have gone well enough in childhood. I believe there's this concept of the “good enough” parent—so if things were generally healthy, the question still arises, but not from a place of trauma or deeply fractured relationships.
Yan: Yes, that’s a tough question because it assumes there’s some objective answer. And maybe there isn’t. There might only be a probabilistic one.
But I would say when it comes to “good enough,” it's subjective, based on the child's inner world as well. Like, I interview people who had terrible—what you might call objectively terrible—physically abusive, emotionally abusive childhoods. And, you know, they’ve managed to come through to the other side pretty well.
Other kids had relatively pleasant childhoods—free of any obvious abuse, maybe some emotional absence or something like that—and yet they end up struggling with mental health issues that get projected onto the parents. So it’s not as clear-cut as, “If you turn these knobs in childhood, you get a perfectly well-adjusted kid on the other side.”
I had another thought, but I lost it. Let’s take a moment to track. I think maybe what matters more—because what I take away from your question is, “If I’m an adult child, what are the conditions that allow me to be well-adjusted enough to have a healthy relationship with my parent?” Is that kind of the sense of the question?
Jacobsen: That’s fair.
Yan: In a way, in my work, I find that if you had an abusive, damaging, traumatic childhood, it’s harder to get to the place of having a healthy relationship with your parent. It’s not impossible—it’s just harder.
And like I said before, because it’s subjective, just because you had a relatively pleasant childhood doesn’t mean it’s necessarily easy to get to that place either. However, I would say that what is common is that getting to that place tends to require shifting from an adult–child dynamic to an adult-adult dynamic.
And part of that shift relates to what I mentioned earlier—accepting the childhood you had. And then, from there, relating from, “Okay, this is who you are. I’m not holding any resentment against you for the way you were—or are. I’m just relating to you as you are today. And from here, what’s possible?”
Jacobsen: What does being close to a parent mean to you?
Yan: [Laughing] I’m giving you a lot of “it depends” answers because it’s complex.
Jacobsen: [Laughing] Sure. Yes, I’m asking for single answers on the very, very complex subject matter.
Yan: This is a question about human development. What’s possible in terms of closeness between any two people—not just a child and a parent—depends on their development.
Let’s say, psychologically—that’s one way to phrase it—as human beings. The closeness between two five-year-olds is different from that between two thirteen-year-olds or two fifty-year-olds.
And some people finish their development at earlier or later stages in their lives. So, there's not one definition of what closeness is. And it’s not dependent on age. Once you become an adult, it depends on whether you have the conditions and circumstances that allow you to develop into further stages of maturity as a person.
And then the capacity for closeness is dependent upon the level of maturation you reach as a person.
The same is true with a child and a parent.
Jacobsen: So, a lot of this is rooted in a sense of perspective and framing. An individual who may have gone through a very unpleasant upbringing—by some objective metric—might end up mentally healthier than someone who went through something like the opposite. It depends, in part, on how each person frames their experience. That internal framing has a huge impact on how the experience is translated into their state of mind and mental health later on. So, how flexible is an individual's framing of these early life circumstances as we develop in our formative years?
Yan: Now you're asking just about the deepest question you can ask about the essence of being human. Not only am I not qualified to answer it definitively, but there may not be an answer.
The way you answer that question reflects your entire philosophy of what it means to be a human being. The spectrum goes all the way from a kind of fatalism—“I don’t control anything; it’s all just particles moving by physics”—to an existentialist view: “I’m choosing the narrative I hold about reality, and that choice frames the possibility set of my life.”
Jacobsen: How does that latter category not become dissociation?
Yan: Well, I think they’re quite different.
Having an existential philosophical frame for life is a conscious choice about how you make sense of reality. Dissociation, to me, happens at a nervous system level—it’s about one’s relationship to the body, to sensation, and the alignment (or misalignment) between mind and body.
You can be disembodied or dissociated, regardless of your philosophy. A person could be dissociated while holding any philosophy, even an existentialist philosophy
Jacobsen: What are the cultural constructions around all this? To use the broad stereotypes: America is highly individualistic; other cultures are stereotypically collectivistic. How do those different cultural frames—which people may not have much control over—impact the ebb and flow of family relationships and their capacity to reframe of their experiences of existentialism to “I have infinite free will”?
Yan: And I’m going to choose not to answer that question exactly as asked. But I’ll answer something I think is related. The question becomes: how does culture influence the dynamics between adult children and their parents? And what’s possible in terms of connection or repair within that cultural context? I mean, we’re getting very heady here. I mean, the frame of reference
The way we even think about what matters is shaped by culture. So if we're thinking on an individual level—like, even the very frame of asking this question about an adult child and a parent and what their relationship is like—that’s already a kind of individualistically framed question, right? We’re not asking, “What is the harmonious nature of the family unit as a whole, or how does that unit function within society?”
That might be a different question. But within the individualistic frame, culture still matters. And we can revisit the concept of developmental stages. How developed a society is—economically, for example—influences the capacity of its individuals to focus on their personal development.
If I’m trying to figure out how to feed myself and my family, my psychological development is likely to be lower than if I have the time and resources to read, reflect, and pursue personal growth. This issue often arises in my work with immigrants. A lot of immigrant parents, especially those from the developing world, didn’t have the time or privilege to reflect deeply on these matters. Their focus was on survival.
And so the gulf between them and their children—especially children who grow up in more developed places like the United States—can be quite wide. That gap tends to be wider than if those parents had also grown up in the U.S., for example. And again, that goes back to developmental differences.
Jacobsen: We can reduce the headiness a bit—we’ll turn that dial down a little. People get in fights. They yell. They scream. They swear. They slur. They blush in anger. These sorts of things. They get exasperated.They lose their words in frustration. They perspirate. All sorts of things happen.
So let’s say there’s a heated argument between an adult child and an adult parent—let’s say within an American, middle-income household–whatever it is in Berkeley.
What are effective methods for cooling things down, bridging the gap of misunderstanding, and rebuilding trust and connection? In other words, how do we “judo” these moments—turning conflict into opportunities for trust-building and deeper connection?
Yan: There are three key points to consider here.
One is that, especially for the adult child, if you carry a lot of lingering resentment toward your parent, a conflict may feel more intense than it is. You might be perceiving your parent through a wounded lens, where everything they say lands as an insult or an attack—even if a third-party observer wouldn’t see it that way. Therefore, developing metacognition and self-awareness in those moments is crucial.
Second, there’s actual skill involved in having a heated conversation. There’s a whole body of work around this. One of my favourites is Nonviolent Communication—that’s a method I’ve trained in. It teaches people how to express themselves clearly while also deeply listening to others. That’s a really important tool.
And third: capacity. And this ties back to the developmental issue. Not everyone has the same emotional capacity in a given moment—or in general—to regulate themselves, stay connected, and have productive conflict. So, part of the work is understanding and honouring the capacity of everyone involved.
Whoever has more capacity to engage in a heated conversation holds more responsibility. It’s very tempting—especially for the adult child—to think, Well, you're my parent, so you should show up with more maturity, take responsibility, apologize, and handle this better.
However, if the parent has a lower developmental capacity than the adult child, they cannot. Or even if they can, it’s much harder for them than it would be for you—someone who has had more capacity, opportunity, and personal development in this area.
So part of reaching an adult-adult relationship is acknowledging, Hey, we’re both adults, but that doesn’t mean we’re equal. And whoever has more capacity necessarily holds more responsibility—especially if we’re going to have a harmonious, nourishing conversation that addresses friction between us.
Jacobsen: For Nonviolent Communication, what is a good tactic for recentering so you can have an accurate assessment?
Yan: Yeah, sure. In NVC, that’s called self-empathy. If I’m dysregulated, how do I support myself to become more regulated? That’s the essence of self-empathy.
And it depends on the person. For some people, taking space alone to reground. For others, it might involve using a somatic technique—like tapping, if you’re familiar with Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT).
Some people might need to process with someone else—that could be a friend, a therapist, or a coach. There isn’t one single way. But in the context of NVC, we call that self-empathy: How do I give myself the emotional nutrients I need to get grounded again and more?
Jacobsen: Do you have any favourite quotes about parent and adult-child relationships?
Yan: The Ram Dass quote is, “If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your parents.”
Jacobsen: [Laughing] I should end with Ram Dass and Tim Leary—that’d be fun. I think, in the long view, their philosophies won out—at least in California. Thank you very much for your time today. It’s always fun talking to people who know what the hell they’re talking about.
Yan: Thanks, Scott. Take care. Bye.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen is a Writer and Editor for A Further Inquiry. He is the publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for The Good Men Project, International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN 0018-7399; Online: ISSN 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), A Further Inquiry, and other media. He is a member in good standing of numerous media organizations.
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