Therapeutic Tseng

For Asian Americans

Phone: (240)-388-9333 | Email: contact@therapeutictseng.com

Asian Americans' core issue is that they are conflicted in their identity. Their different Asian and American aspects are not in harmony, and for various reasons. Asian Americans do not always feel accepted as Americans because their skin is not white. On the other hand, Asian Americans experience rejection from Asian immigrant family due to not being “Asian” enough. These experiences of not being “pure” enough lead to self-loathing and a lack of reconciliation of these different identity aspects. When we are already blocked in loving ourselves due to our heritage and birth circumstances, we are blocked from going deeper to truly exploring and understanding ourselves.

I believe Asian Americans want to go towards their future, but feel blocked by their past. Like all other Americans, I think many Asian Americans want to have their future participating in the American landscape they call their home. They want to have dreams and they want to become something greater than they already are. But many Asian Americans do not inherently feel they can do that because of their Asian heritage and ties to cultural family expectations.

I’ve heard countless times in sessions where Asian American clients express desires to pursue their dream career (which is often times is not being a doctor, lawyer, or engineer), desires to be appreciated and treated well by friends and family, desires to rest and play… only to cut their dream speech short by saying “but it is the way it is, you know?” Often times, they are referring to cultural ideas they have learned that to be Asian, you must serve others, and above all your family. That to be Asian, means thinking for yourself is selfish, and martyring yourself for others is an honor.

A big part of the work I do is unpacking and demystifying what these Asian cultural ideas that we have taken to be immutable law. Many Asian Americans only experience their roots in so far as they have been taught by their parents and immediate family. This knowledge is curated and selectively distributed out by dysregulated elders who have experienced cultural, political, intergenerational, and economic trauma. The truth is so many of these Asian cultural ideas we hear are not heart-centered and not nourishing. There is something deeply wrong with that. And thus, we must challenge and question where this information is coming from. We must understand why our ancestors and lineage have come to transmit scarcity-minded, in-group thinking, hierarchical, and punitive messages to us.

The hardest thing to do when you love someone is call them out when they are wrong. So many Asian Americans have a hard time challenging their parents when they are receiving unconscious family wounding. Because to call out our elders with empathy, means deeply witnessing that they too have been deeply wounded by their own elders and lineage. And so on and so forth… because clearly no one has broken this cycle before you. We need to accept that the reason that our elders cannot openly dialogue with emotions and love is because that magic was extinguished from our culture way before our elders were even born. We are a bunch of wounded children parenting other wounded children.

Reparative work is really hard. But when you heal yourself, the saying goes that “you heal seven generations up and seven generations down”. The work you to do lovingly reconcile your Asian and American parts is exponentially healing to your ancestors who didn’t know how to love themselves either. When you do embrace your Asian inner child with kindness and grace, you learn how to give the same to other Asians in your community and guide them in healing their own trauma. Suicide rates have increased significantly for Asian Americans. Even in Asia, countries are experiencing dangerously low birth rates. As a therapist, my diagnosis is that we as Asians don’t love ourselves… we don’t know how to love ourselves. And we are unconfident about creating more life if our children are going to experience the same punitive life experience that we have. All that needs to change. I believe every Asian and Asian American can do crucial work when they choose to heal themselves with love and that will have rippling impacts on our whole community.