Updated May 14, 2024 at 09:27 AM ET
When you live in between different cultures as many Asian Americans do – your identity forces you to constantly navigate between different languages, customs and cultural ideals. And feelings of safety, belonging, authenticity and compassion — what psychologist Jenny Wang calls "home" — can be hard to figure out.
To find what "home" means to you, first you must understand the different cultural forces that shape your mentality and perspective of yourself and the world, says Wang, author of Permission to Come Home: Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans.
While no culture is a monolith, Wang's work has revealed common mental health burdens of the Asian American experience. Here are a few of these ideas and tools to help you tackle them and communicate them with your loved ones, regardless of your background.
The issue: You worry too much about what your elders think
Deference to elders and authority figures is a highly held value in a lot of Asian American homes. It can have its benefits, like instilling order and family unity, but it also creates a hierarchical structure that can socialize kids not to challenge the decisions or expectations of their elders, says Wang.
"This creates a dynamic in which the person holding less power may feel as though they're kind of silenced within that relationship," she says, "or they might feel as though they need to make themselves smaller in order to fit into the confines of that hierarchy."
How to address it in real life: What's important to remember when navigating the intergenerational divide, says Wang, is that everyone's on the same team and aiming for the same goals of safety and success.
"A lot of immigrant parents came here with very little or were on their own and felt unsafe," she says. That can affect the types of jobs or level of education they want their kids to pursue. "[They push for] all of these benchmarks that they think will lead us to a better life, which is, for a lot of them, why they came to this country in the first place."
But you might have a different idea of the life or job or education you want to pursue. By picking the "safe" or parent-approved career or partner or lifestyle, you could be setting yourself up for resentment.
Instead, first give yourself permission to make the best decisions for yourself, says Wang. By acknowledging that you share the same goals as your family for safety and prosperity, and communicating your needs with clarity and kindness, it'll be easier to find a middle ground.
The issue: You feel like you can't be yourself
The model minority myth is "a caricature of individuals who are hardworking, compliant, highly educated and passive in the face of mistreatment," says Wang.
This trope is problematic for a lot of reasons: from a mental health perspective, Wang says it "creates this façade that Asian Americans don't struggle," and can reinforce the idea that you should keep your problems to yourself to avoid shame. The myth also reinforces cultural assimilation and the idea of saving face.
How to address it in real life: All of these expectations work together to minimize the lived experiences of Asian Americans, making it difficult for many people to fully know or show up as their authentic selves.
This is a broader societal and structural problem, but on a personal level, Wang says there are a lot of small ways to better inform your sense of self and take up more space in public spaces.
Have a good idea at work? Speak up as soon as you have it instead of waiting to be asked. Say a confident hello to your neighbor instead of looking down as you pass them. Learn and share about your cultural heritage or family history.
"And that can be really scary as people of color," says Wang. "But at the same time, if we comply or become complicit to our own invisibility, we will never be seen as whole authentic people."
The issue: You feel pressure to be perfect
In many Asian American households, perfection feels like the standard. Coming home with a bad grade or a missed job opportunity can feel like big familial disappointment.
Feeling like you're never good enough can keep you from trying new things or being vulnerable with your loved ones.
How to address it in real life: Instead, Wang suggests finding the ways that a failure might serve you. How can this moment be an opportunity for growth? How can this current failure be an opportunity for future success?
Beyond interrogating any singular failure, it's important to separate your identity from your accomplishments. "We have to start to detach ourselves from those outcomes as markers of identity or self-worth," Wang says.
A bad outcome in school doesn't make you any less worthy of love and your identity is not defined by your job title. Practicing self-compassion and maintaining a strong sense of core values can help everyone from sweating the small stuff.
The issue: You feel like you can't say 'no' to your family
In cultures that idealize sacrifice and the collective good over the self, drawing boundaries can trigger a sense of guilt. But there is nothing to feel guilty about.
"When we don't have boundaries, it means that we are essentially giving away our time, our energy, all our resources without any sense of whether or not we have capacity to give those things away," says Wang. That's a recipe for anger, resentment and depletion.
How to address it in real life: In moments of repeated discomfort, she says, find a boundary that's firm but flexible. That might mean setting limits on how long or how often you show up for family events, agreeing to avoid certain topics at dinner or just learning to say "no" when you're over-extended.
Remember that boundaries can and should be communicated with kindness, but also need to be reinforced. Once you draw a line, stick with it. Otherwise, relationships can stall or deteriorate.
Wang knows this process isn't always easy, but boundary-setting, much like maintaining our mental health, is very much a practice of love and care – for ourselves and our community.
Listen to Life Kit on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or sign up for our newsletter.
Copyright 2022 NPR
