Did you feel a sense of otherness growing up and not being fully your whole self in white spaces or asian spaces?
Has setting boundaries with your immigrant parents led to disagreements, chronic fights and headaches?
Do you wish you could go back in time and have parents that made you felt valued and loved?
Perhaps you’re tired of explaining your unique cultural experience to your non Asian therapist. Maybe you feel like it’s a losing battle trying to fit into the model minority myth from getting good grades in school to overachieving in your career.
When you were little, your immigrant parents were focused on work to survive, providing basic needs, such as food and shelter, but you may never have felt loved, seen or understood by them. There is a longing for a sense of connection with your parents and grief of loss and maybe even disappointment that you may never receive it.
In high school, you were valued and rewarded for good grades, high SAT scores, and the prospect of getting into a good college. It has led to you feeling anxious and stressed all the time. Or maybe you decided to rebel and you feel shamed for being the “dumb asian” who is bad at school. I knew I was one when I did not make it into the specialized high school or did not pass 3rd grade!
Model Minority is a myth that Asian Americans are the solution or model racial group, but how did it feel to be part of the problem? On the outside, your life is perfect, you had good grades, went to a good school and have a good job that makes money, but on the inside, you are anxious, depressed, confused and unhappy. You get passed on for promotions and raises. You feel invisible. Your needs and wants don’t matter. You don’t feel good enough. You don’t feel worthy of taking up emotional or physical space.
At this point, you may feel your needs and wants don’t matter but there are ways to overcome them. There is this constant pressure to be perfect, and the pressure makes you want to run away or panic. With my help you can squash any negative anxious feelings despite feeling you are grateful because your parents sacrificed so much but want to live in peace.
According to the CDC statistics, suicide is the number one cause of death for Asian Americans between the ages of 15 and 24. We pay the cost of success by not having our emotional needs met. Therapy for Asian Americans is needed more than ever. A lot of Asian Americans are emotionally hungry without realizing they are starved for connection and yearning to heal from the pain of racism and growing up misunderstood, unseen and unheard. The AAPI community is in pain and collectively overwhelmed by the anti asian hate crimes. According to statistics from Stop AAPI Hate, the rate of violence for AAPI hate crimes has gone up by 300%.
I am an Asian American therapist, and to be specific, a Cantonese American therapist. I am a wounded healer that provides a transformative, and healing experience for you to get back to feeling your sense of self and help you get the aliveness you have lost along the way.
Part of my work with you is undoing the loneliness you felt your whole life and helping you to see yourself fully and not only parts of yourself that are only accepted in certain spaces. Therapy can provide a safe enough environment to be vulnerable and understand your emotions.
I am an Asian American therapist that deeply cares and understands your struggles as I can relate to growing up through a bicultural lens. Our work together will be an experience, and for once in your life you will not be doing (with a million distractions on social media), but relating, and feeling emotions and being okay with it. When you work with a therapist that you feel safe with and truly understands what you are growing through, therapy will be healing for you and the people around you will also notice a difference!
You will connect deeper and form stronger relationships and heal your childhood wounds. You will learn to develop insights to why patterns keep repeating and how your parents’ attachment style affects your feeling of safety in the world. I will show you what the underlying issues behind your anxious and sad thoughts are and help you cope with them.
The asian culture and the model minority myth reinforces Asian Americans to sacrifice their own needs and wants to please and serve others without limits. You will learn healthy boundaries to deal with your asian parents that may not understand boundaries. Boundaries are a form of love, not rejection. I notice Asian Americans either end up having no contact or cutting their parents off.
Healthy boundaries can help you have a relationship with your asian parents. You will also develop healthy coping skills to deal with your anxiety, such as breathing techniques, self-care skills, and learning to connect with your body and trusting your gut feeling in therapy. I also teach you to take up space and level up in your career, by showing you what you want and how to ask for what you want instead of pleasing others.
Therapy is an investment in yourself and the people around you. Therapy can help you find your dream career, get the love you want and live a freer life. Sometimes therapy even saves a life!
By developing self awareness, you can reduce stress and anxiety as you learn to deal with conflict and not avoid uncomfortable feelings such as fear, anger, sadness and shame.
Asians do go to therapy and more and more people are breaking that stigma. Therapy is like a gym for the mind, helping you declutter and organize your thoughts like a tangled ball of yarn.
There is short term and long term therapy. Some therapy can be 3-4 months and some can be years. Most clients get what they want and we decide collaboratively when to stop. Therapy is life changing for me and my clients when they finish treatment. You will feel light, grateful and alive in your soul in the ways that you have been yearning for. You will be happy and present in your life.
If you would like to schedule an appointment or discuss any questions you may have regarding therapy with me, please contact me. I offer a free 15-minute phone consultation, and if we are not a good fit, I provide referrals. I try to get back to emails within 1-4 hours on weekdays.
Very special guest post by Richard G. Lanzara, MPH, PHD. Follow him on LinkedIn to learn more about his receptor research.
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