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While the Asian community is incredibly diverse in its histories, languages, cultures, and traditions, many shared experiences create a sense of mutual understanding. Many Asian Americans navigate the tension between belonging in mainstream society and honoring family and cultural values. As these values continue to evolve, balancing traditional and non-traditional expectations remains an ongoing challenge—one that often plays out within our nervous systems. Recognizing commonalities across our communities can be validating and even intergenerationally corrective, helping us examine the biases we pass on to future generations. Asian providers have an opportunity to broaden our knowledge, so that we become more culturally attuned to our clients, and help shape healthier conversations for generations to come.
Cultural Considerations
Jack Lam, LCSW, and founder of the Yellow Chair Collective, alongside Barbara Huong, AMFT, a therapist with the same organization, shared a few thoughts with me recently. Lam pointed out that learning the broader context and history of East Asian Americans can be beneficial for understanding clients with regard to how they think, feel, and respond to the world around them, specifically given the cultural context. Huong discussed how family is a huge part of the equation. Asian clients tend to care deeply about their family’s well-being, to the neglect of their own needs. This is a familiar theme in South Asian (SA) culture, where family can often take center stage, impacting decision-making and life goals.
While history, culture, and family shape identity, Asian identities are fluid rather than monolithic, evolving across environments, circumstances, and comfort levels. This can influence how individuals understand cultural and racial experiences, including racism. Generational and acculturational differences often shape responses. In his documentary, Homecoming King, Hasan Minhaj describes how his father quietly cleaned up after a racist attack on their family, viewing such incidents as “the price” of being immigrants. Hasan, however, felt anger and asserted his right to belong as a Muslim American. Their differing reactions highlight how generations and levels of acculturation can shape responses to discrimination.
Lam notes that the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic had both physical and psychological effects. “Many of us, especially within East Asian communities, experienced heightened anxiety and vicarious trauma” from repeated exposure to violence. He also emphasizes that families may respond very differently: “One family may interpret this as a reason to speak out and advocate, while another may urge their members to hide or keep their heads down.” These differences can lead to misunderstandings, emotional conflict, and strained relationships within family units. Similar patterns emerged in some SA families after 9/11, highlighting how trauma responses and the internalization of events can vary widely across and within families.
Oftentimes, SAs are hesitant to speak up in general and especially so for other minority groups, as they may be subtly socialized against doing so. The psychology behind this is likely to be due to not wanting to incite the aggressor and become the next target. This is usually masked in sentiments like, “it’s not our business” or “don’t get yourself into trouble.” Given the model minority status of Asians generally, this is not a surprising response. These dynamics also shape how individuals internalize experiences and trauma, resulting in responses that can vary significantly across communities.
Expressing Emotions
When it comes to emotional expression, Huong shares that some of her clients describe being raised in authoritarian households, where they are taught to suppress their feelings and curiosities. She shares how clients were “discouraged or even punished by family as children when they were introspective and expressive about their experiences.”
In South Asian families, emotional expression may be minimized or met with immediate problem-solving. However, some families normalize open arguments and loud disagreements, challenging the notion that all Asians suppress emotions.
Huong shares that many Asian clients tend to minimize or intellectualize their emotional struggles due to internalized norms around emotional restraint and saving “face.” They may have been raised in enmeshed boundaries, as is common among Asian families, which can lead to feeling guilty or selfish when expressing needs. She adds that “clients who have been in therapy for a while still have a hard time recognizing when they invalidate their own experiences.” Huong finds that “many immigrant parents recount their own suffering in a way that directly or indirectly teaches their children to minimize pain and trauma.”
She also shares how clients struggle to name their parents’ harmful behaviors as abuse, adding that “they find it hard to validate their own experience if it means placing blame or disapproval on their parents, especially if their survival needs were met.” This is an issue common to South Asian families. Some parents may reframe this as tough or strict parenting, claiming that they didn’t mean any real harm, especially given how much they may have sacrificed to provide for their children’s basic needs. Given this framework, they may not understand why their adult child may have distanced themselves or have challenges in their own relationships.
Lam shares how in his work with LGBTQ+ Asian Americans, a question that often surfaces is, “Am I less Asian because I’m queer?” This is especially true for queer Asian children in predominantly White or non-Asian communities, where their parents are often their primary cultural reference. Unfortunately, negative beliefs about queer identity within some Asian families are often conflated with culture itself. Lam goes on to share, “Even for queer Asian people who grew up around majority Asian populations, this interpretation of a cultural rejection can occur if differences are heavily stigmatized.”
There is a similar view in some South Asian communities that queer identity is a “Western” value, despite queer identities existing throughout cultural history. Collectivist norms can sometimes act as gatekeepers, leading to the rejection of queerness, neurodivergence, or health challenges and shaming individuals into silence. As Lam notes, the subtext many internalize is: “Your difference is not something that belongs in our culture.”
Escaping Perfectionism
Despite growing advocacy and Asian mental health platforms, many Asian clients still come to therapy wanting to be “fixed,” with perfectionism remaining the gold standard. Lam notes that mental health challenges “may not be problems to solve, but sometimes just continued companions of our existence.” Recurrent depression, for example, can “get in the way” of work and relationships, leading clients to feel they have failed when they need ongoing support. Huong observes that some cope through avoidance strategies such as doomscrolling. Compassionate, culturally informed reframing can help support clients on their therapeutic journey.
