Breaking the Stigma Against Therapy in the Asian-American Community
I didn’t see the need to go to therapy until I was already becoming a therapist myself.
And even then, it was a struggle for me to accept the idea that it could be worth the investment, financially, logistically, and emotionally.
Like so many others growing up in the 90’s, I rarely heard about therapy unless it was in the context of something being really ‘wrong’ with someone. When someone says, “They need therapy,” it has judgment dripping all over it. If you were living your life ‘right’, then you would be spared this unusual form of treatment/punishment, baring your soul to a complete stranger who told you what was wrong with you. I was taught to take care of my own problems and be certain not to burden others with them. Getting to the point where I was required to speak to someone about my feelings and share dark secrets? No thank you, I will be a ‘good girl’ and avoid that like the plague.
According to Dr. Ito, people from the Asian-American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) community are 50% less likely than other races to seek therapy. According to Mental Health America, we are the least likely in general to reach out for any mental health service at all.
I work with primarily Asian-American clients and the majority of my friends and family are in this community as well. Though we come from different cultural backgrounds and ethnicities, we share many collective and traditional values—especially when it comes to how to build trust. So many of our experiences, especially as immigrants or raised by immigrant parents, are centered on identity shifts that come from leaving your home and finding roots in another. “Who am I now?” is a question we are constantly exploring in therapy. “Who am I, now that I have changed so much of my environment, my neighbors, my community? How do I learn to fit in among a sea of cultures that don’t share my way of life?” And oftentimes the answer lies within our emotions, bottled and buried under the masks and pretense we put up between ourselves and the people we care about most.
Sharon Kwon, guest writing on the Huffington Post, shared her personal story of overcoming this stigma and seeking her own therapist, eventually being inspired to become a therapist herself, and said this:
“I quickly came to realize that therapy is a non-judgment zone. It was the one safe space that I had where every week for just one hour, I was allowed to be myself and let down all the walls I built around me out of survival. I didn’t have to wear the many various masks I wore for my different identities — as the daughter, friend, sister, employee and more. I didn’t have to be so hypervigilant about others’ feelings and about potentially offending or disagreeing with them. For that one hour, I was allowed to be selfish and unapologetic. I was allowed to complain, vent and cry. I was allowed to feel hopeless and anxious. I was allowed to just be.”
So much of my experience as a young kid was centered around being a ‘good girl’. If I wasn’t good, I would lose privileges, miss rewards, and empathy would be withheld. I learned very quickly to be perceived as good, even if I wasn’t always. Being good meant you couldn’t cry, you couldn’t shout, and you couldn’t complain. Being good meant you smiled when spoken to, you said please and thank you, and you responded to “how are you” with “good!”
Similar to Sharon Kwon, I found therapy to be liberating, freeing, a space to finally discover myself and uncover the parts I had hidden away for fear of rejection and punishment. An essential part of this was having Filipina therapists. They did not need me to explain what my family meant when they said certain things, nor did they have to grasp the concept of immigration—they knew. I had the benefit of being in the Master’s program for counseling and knowing ahead of time that I would need someone who understood my culture. I would accept nothing less: I needed a Filipina therapist.
In order to break the stigma in the AANHPI community, Kwon outlines 3 solid points about what needs to change:
Asian-Americans need therapists who understand our culture.
We must acknowledge and accept with kindness that we are taught not to air our ‘dirty laundry’.
It’s important that more of us seek mental health support that aligns with understanding the generational cycles of trauma.
It can take a little while before you or someone you care about can learn to open up to the idea of going to therapy—that is to be expected. We must find trust in order to take the risk of meeting someone with our hopes and dreams, fears and dread. As our world changes and more mental health awareness becomes available, the simplest and smallest conversation with a trusted person can start the momentum of breaking stigma, one person at a time.
