Have you ever struggled with navigating your queer identity while also navigating your Asian identity? Have you tried to access therapy or other mental health support and felt it wasn’t affirming of your unique identities?

This month, we chat Sara Stanizai – a licensed therapist, clinical supervisor, and the owner of Prospect Therapy, a queer- and trans-affirming therapy practice based in Long Beach, CA, with a special focus on serving first-generation American and immigrant communities.

A queer first-gen herself, Sara’s clinical and professional work focuses on serving the Afghan diaspora, specifically, fellow Afghan-American women, and bicultural communities in general. In addition to running her group practice, she is on the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles Bisexual Task Force, a 501c3 organization that champions education, advocacy and visibility for the bi+ communities of greater Los Angeles. 

Check out the work that Sara does with Prospect Therapy here!

Sara, LMFT and founder of Prospect Therapy

Tell me about your practice! What does it mean to be an affirming therapist? What’s it like to work with LGBTQ+ Asian clients?

Sara: We are a queer and trans affirming practice with a focus on first-gen and immigrant communities. All of our therapists bring lived experience and high quality clinical training to our work. Lived experience in short means we share many identities and experiences with the people we serve. We believe that clinical training and lived experience are both important in our work – neither is the “full story.”

An affirming therapist makes sure to check our assumptions, examine our own biases, understand where our own beliefs come from, and keep educating ourselves. Simply because we are “familiar with” a presenting issue or type of person doesn’t mean we know this person’s destination! I like to say an affirming therapist uses our knowledge as a foundation but helps our client build the house on top of it

It’s great working with the intersection of queer + Asian/PoC clients because we constantly hear that this is often one of the first times someone has been able to bring their whole self to therapy and really get to work through things. Even if those things are not what brought them to therapy, at least they don’t have to leave part of themself at the door.

What does it mean or look like when therapists bring lived experience and/or integrate feminist theory into their practice?

Sara: We embrace feminist therapy – which is not just “therapy for women”. It is a framework that takes systems into account. So that if you are experiencing distress, it’s not simply because you need to “shift your perspective.” Feminist therapy recognizes that we all exist within patriarchal and white-centered systems, and that would naturally result in distress for people not at the top.

What’s something you would want to share with young LGBTQ+ Asian folks?

Sara: Your identity is valid even if you don’t have a heartwarming coming-out-to-your-family story. Your experience is still valid even if you don’t share the information with your family. “Coming out” is not a deciding factor and is often imposed on people who are not interested or able to share things about ourselves.

Chosen family is a real thing and finding people who treat you the way you deserve, with respect, understanding and compassion is not limited by conventional standards.

Any tips for those who are unable to access identity-affirming therapy?

Sara: Find your people! We are everywhere. It does not have to be limited to official providers just like it doesn’t need to be your caregivers or siblings. There are peer-led groups, online forums, gaming communities, queer coffee shops or bars (if that’s your thing), and other groups that have nothing to do with being queer that you can join.

Also don’t feel bad for needing or wanting recognition or validation. We all need that when we are figuring ourselves out. If we don’t get that – if others don’t reflect us back to ourselves, it can be hard to know what’s what. Once you get enough of that, you’ll know who you are even if no one is there to validate you. It’s like trying to get dressed in the dark – we need some sort of confirmation that we’re doing it right. That our signal is being received. Once we get comfortable with that, then we don’t need the mirror after all. 😊 But everyone needs it at first, so don’t feel bad for that!

What do you want to say to those navigating coming out to their family as an Asian queer person?

Find an ally, a role model, or a buffer for tense family situations. If you have someone to whom you can vent about it afterward, that can make all the difference and help you feel less alone.

If you are the first or only in your family that you know of, take heart in knowing that you are being there for your future family members who will be able to look to you for support.

And finally if you tell everyone but your family, or no one at all, you’re still who you say you are.

Check out Prospect Therapy as well as the Los Angeles Bi Task Force which Sara is on the board of!

In celebration of Pride Month and to celebrate our Asian queer, trans, non-binary and genderqueer friends and allies – we spoke with various advocates in the Asian Mental Health Collective community to spread light on the important work they do.

Meet Dr. Noel Ramirez, Founder and Director of Mango Tree Counseling & Consulting. They are an AAPI mental health resource center in the Philadelphia Metro Area and provide psychotherapy, group education, and consulting to AAPI communities. All of Mango Tree’s therapists identify as AAPI and have varying lived experiences that inform their frame and clinical practice. They also host Mental Wellness Seminars on the 2nd Thursdays of the month, 8pm EST where we go over topics and frameworks on mental health.

Read more about Dr. Ramirez’s background, what readings and resources he recommends, and what he would tell young LGBTQ+ Asian folks today.

Tell us about your practice and what it’s like to work with LGBTQ+ Asian folks!

I have been very fortunate to have been in close proximity to queer AAPI identity my whole life. My uncle lived with us for many years and was gay. He died from AIDS-related complications when I was young. But in those formative years, I remember witnessing both the pain and resilience of filipinx communities trying their best to understand and love through stigma and cultural difference. His life and death had a profound effect on me and my family’s ability to love and care unconditionally.

I grew up in Jersey City, NJ. It was very queer and very asian-American. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to find community in my adolescence and to have that be a part of my development as a person, professional, and clinician. From eating at the Philippine Bread House, being a part of a Filipino-youth programming/organizing in high school to a dancer at a queer Asian night club, to organizing with other Queer AAPI folx in Philly and now running an AAPI mental health group practice, community has always been very important to my work and life.

It is a great privilege to be in a place of service for my community. For me, the intersection of AAPI and Queer identity lives in the search and pursuit of a sense of home, and this is both felt in mild and intense ways. Therapy is a place, where I hope that folx can find a sense of home within their bodies, minds, and hearts. Being a witness to that process is one of the greatest honors in my life.

Are there interesting queer theories or practice that help you personally or in your work?

There are many – the work of Shawn Ginwright in creating healing-centered engagement has been at the forefront of my work. Ginwright challenges trauma-informed models to work in a collective, to focus on resilience vs suppression of trauma symptoms, to acknowledge and embrace the political nature of healing (vs treatment), and also emphasizes the importance of intersubjectivity.

I think working within my community also requires a great sense and appreciation for intersubjective and relational models – acknowledging the mutual impact of working with a clinician that may share a socio-cultural identity with the client. And as well, an awareness of critical consciousness and post-colonialism. Many of us experience a sense of intergenerational trauma from global and collective trauma. We are also descendent of folx who have been able to survive and find agency through those traumas – the acknowledgment and awareness of that meta-narrative are critical to the work.

Are there any readings, resources, activists or organizations that you want to shout out?

I’m a steering committee member to Philadelphia Asian and Queer (PAQ: phillyasianqueer.com) and have been active with NQAPIA and Asian Mental Health Collective.

Readings and Resources:

• This Filipino American Life (TFAL) podcast,
• Ocean Vuong “On Earth We were briefly Gorgeous,
• EJR David “Brown Skin white minds”
• Sonia Rene Taylor “your body is not an apology” and
• if you’re into psychoanalytic thoughts, check out David Eng.

What’s something you want young queer, trans, NB/GNC Asian youth reading to know?

Therapy is not the only pathway to healing, though it’s very important! I want to encourage folx to find community and collectives that seek to love, honor, and respect who you are as a person. Community saved my life as a young person and there is something incredibly powerful to feel both seen and honored by a peer and an elder.

You are a descendent of communities that are looking to find you, to honor you, to love you, and to know you. You are descendent of voyagers, who are driven by so many beautiful things and have endured great pains and have uncanny resilience. You are enough.

You can check out Mango Tree Counselling & Consulting on their website here or on Instagram at @dr.noel.mango.tree.

 

Transgender athlete Schuyler Bailar has broken many records in his life, one of the most notable being that he is the first transgender athlete on any NCAA Division 1 men’s team. Schuyler is also an advocate and activist for the LGBTQ community, using his voice to empower others. Though his accomplishments as a swimmer and Harvard athlete are truly admirable, our interview focused on his mental health journey as well as his upbringing as a mixed-race Korean American. Schuyler has always been open about his mental health struggles and we at the Asian Mental Health Collective are honored that he has allowed us to take a peek into his inspirational journey to becoming a professional swimmer and a big voice in the LGBTQ community.

Schuyler is no stranger to mental health struggles, as he is someone who has battled with anxiety throughout his whole life.  Schuyler broke his back after a biking accident in high school, which resulted in him being unable to swim for many years. While in recovery, Schuyler lost his identity and struggled more with his mental health because “breaking [his] back had taken everything that [he] knew and used to cope” as a competitive athlete. Schuyler also began struggling with an eating disorder which he went to a rehab center for 4-5 months during a gap year between high school and college. This was also where he discovered the term transgender and began realizing his gender identity. Besides these personal health struggles, Schuyler was also battling with the internal feeling of “being between worlds”, which is a big recurring theme in his life.

As a Korean American, Schuyler had difficulty reconciling the two halves of his identity, his Caucasian side, and his Korean heritage. He states that the “first thing [he] knew about [himself] before gender or anything was race.”

“I don’t know when I didn’t know that I was between worlds… my dad and my mom were completely different people visually. Race was something I saw everywhere,” he mused.

Schuyler’s Korean grandparents lived nearby and the proximity and familial closeness at times made him feel more Korean than White. However, he says how there is an “interesting erasure, where [he] is expected to be not Asian but also come from Asian roots.” His Korean grandparents enrolled him in Korean Sunday school, where he felt “dumb” as he could not compete with fellow Korean peers who spoke the language at home every day. Referring back to his struggles with an eating disorder, Schuyler mentions how his Korean grandmother showed him love through her cooking, and he felt as if he was “rejecting love, when [he] was rejecting her bowl of rice”. As he was growing up, people on the streets would assume he was adopted when he was with his dad, or that his mother was his babysitter as he did not look completely Asian or completely White. His mom eventually had to change her last name because others threatened her, saying that people would take Schuyler and his brother away if she did not have a matching last name. 

“Knowing that I’m not perceived as my parents’ child is a painful experience.” 

Going back to the time Schuyler was enrolled at the Oliver-Pyatt Rehab center for his eating disorder, he met a therapist who he states “saved his life”. For many years growing up, Schuyler struggled with gender dysphoria, always feeling the safest and most comfortable in short hair and boy clothes. However, he did not have the knowledge and terminology for what he was feeling until he spoke with this specific therapist. Schuyler talks about how his therapist listened in between the lines and figured out that his main problem revolved around his gender identity. Schuyler emphasizes, “I did not wake up one day and said I am transgender. People don’t decide to be transgender. They find the language, they find the courage, and they discover that’s who they always were.” With the realization of his gender identity came more problems, a major one being that he was going to have to choose between coming out or swimming and continuing to hide his identity. Over time, Schuyler was able to choose both competitive swimming and being open about his gender identity, and he acknowledges his privilege of having a supportive, loving family who was behind him every step of the way. Schuyler laughs as he states that the only caveat his grandmother gave him about his identity was that “Korean daughters take care of their parents” and since Schuyler’s parents now had two sons, he was still going to have to step up. In Schuyler’s experience, his family is very matriarchal, and as Schuyler’s grandma accepted him, so did everyone else in the family. 

Schuyler is now very open about his identity as a queer Korean American transgender man and has become a voice for the LGBTQ community. He actively shoots down misconceptions about the trans community and publicly voices his experiences in support of other trans youth. He states that, “Being trans is not a choice. It is an identity like how I didn’t choose to be Korean American. I did choose to come out about it and transition. For a lot of trans people, the choice to transition is a choice between life or death.” Schuyler notes his privilege in being able to come out and how choice is something he is lucky to have had in his life. He also clarifies how being transgender is commonly mislabeled as a mental illness and delves into the history of gender diversity. “White supremacy were the things that started to push out gender and sexual diversity as a way to oppress and assert dominance over other cultures. Pre-colonialism, homosexuality was actually praised.” The real mental disorder is gender dysphoria and he says how the treatment actually involves affirming the person’s gender identity, not forcing them to change. Transgender persons also are subjected to uncomfortable questions all the time about their genitalia or other invasive questions. Schuyler emphasizes how “sharing about being transgender does not invite you to ask questions, especially not about their genitals”. 

Schuyler ends the interview with motivational advice for anyone struggling with their gender identity. He says, “The world will push you to be different versions of yourself and when the world tries to tell you who you are, the world is often wrong. The world and your parents do not know you better than yourself.” He also brings up a poem that he wrote to his 8 year old self while in treatment. Schulyer writes, “8 year old Schuyler, they’re going to try to trick you to think that you don’t know but you know who you are, and you have a right to know who you are.”

To keep up with Schuyler and his many resources, please check out our links below and follow him at @pinkmantaray on IG!

https://pinkmantaray.com/category/resources

Tell us about the listening sessions and support groups that AMHC offers. What are these programs and how can people sign up as participants? 

Ryan: The listening sessions were a one-on-one peer support initiative that have transitioned to the current professional-led community support groups. Every month we start a new 8-week group with various topics led by Asian licensed mental health professionals to provide a space to connect with and seek support from other group members. We advertise these sessions on our social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter), so look out for them to register! The team is also looking into different peer counseling models to ensure we keep to professional guidelines, so we could still have something one-on-one in future that is similar to our listening sessions.

Amanda: Previously, AMHC used to offer one-on-one support to anyone requesting a listening session. However, in order to reach more folks, it was transitioned to a support group style. People can sign up as participants by checking on AMHC’s FB page, IG stories, or Twitter to find the link to join support groups. Currently the one I am helping to facilitate is open to all, so don’t hesitate to sign up!

What is your role on the listeners team? What have you learned from your experience?

Ryan: I help to coordinate the support groups and have had the chance to be a cofacilitator with Dr. Sean Cheng for one of the very first groups we started. As a trainee in the mental health field, the experience prompted me to think about and refine my own facilitating style, as well as how to moderate conversations that members bring up. I also learned that there is power and comfort in community.

Amanda: My role on the listeners team now is being a co-facilitator to assist Dr. Smith, a licensed clinical psychologist, moderate the support group. I have learned how to pay greater attention to bodily cues, facial expressions, tone of voice, and many other aspects because as a facilitator, it is important to notice how others are reacting to vulnerable, possibly triggering experiences being shared. 

What’s the most rewarding part about volunteering for these support programs?

Ryan: It would be hearing from group members how thankful they feel to have these spaces where they can share, feel validated and not have to explain themselves as other members typically have common experiences as Asian/Asian Americans. This tells me that we’re doing something right and folks are benefitting from these groups!

Amanda: The most rewarding part about volunteering for these support programs is meeting people from all walks of life. It reminds me that outside of the bubble of my life, there are others with similar and different experiences than me. I continue to develop a more open, unassuming mind. 

Wrestling with body positivity has been an important struggle for me throughout my life. Growing up as an Asian-American male has often made me a target for mockery; in particular, people have often insulted me for my size. Family, friends, and complete strangers have all told me that I’m “so skinny,” and seeing popular media reinforce the idea that I am small because I am Asian, and therefore have significantly less value than the average person, has often thrown me into a vicious cycle of self-loathing, internalized racism, and mental health struggles. However, for better or worse, my experiences have deeply shaped my character today, and they have forced me to develop a stronger connection with my own mental health.

From the moment I was born, I was checked by others for my size; doctors had to monitor me closely for hours, as they were concerned about how small I was. Thankfully, I grew up healthily and started running cross country in high school. Unfortunately, I stopped in college as running began to take a toll on my body; I was underweight, had bad runner’s knee, and went to the hospital once for running in the rain, as my body physically could not keep me warm enough. At the time, I got told a lot that I was really skinny, but that never bothered me much since I was focused on my performance as a runner, not my appearance. When I stopped running, I turned to dance as a source of body positivity. However, my parents told me to stop dancing in college, and being too scared to push back against them at the time, I was left with nothing to make me feel good about how I looked. At the same time, the comments about my size continued and got meaner. People would mockingly try to wrap their hands around my biceps, or comment that they could “snap me in half” if they wanted to.

In addition, unrelated racist remarks and actions directed towards myself and others compounded my reaction to jokes about my size; I began to quickly solidify the idea in my head that being Asian made me small and weak, and therefore made me worthless. Eventually, I fell into a very dark mental state for months; I barely ate or got out of bed during that time. At some point, I finally decided I would change myself regardless of what people said or did to me, but that wasn’t easy starting out. I would go to the gym and, like most people who start weight training with no prior experience, had no clue what I was doing. I became discouraged by my lack of progress and continued to yo-yo between hating myself and feeling good about working out. That was two years ago.

Fast forward to now, I’m an NASM Certified Personal Trainer, am a healthy body weight for the first time in my life, and my friends and family look up to me as somebody who knows not just how to alter their physical appearance, but more importantly, as somebody who knows how to make sustainable, realistic, and healthy change for themselves and not for the approval of others. I am currently starting my own training business, aimed at helping thinner people like myself build muscle and develop strength and confidence.

I would be lying if I said that mental health and internalized racism are not still struggles for me today, especially when it comes to my looks. Those experiences I had growing up and through college did irreparable damage, and negative comments about my race and appearance will always sting a little bit. It’s not that the pain itself that I’ve felt has made me stronger, but rather that it has given me opportunities to discover and develop myself more fully, which is perhaps a blessing in disguise. I still get made fun of sometimes; I sometimes still fear other people’s judgement and criticism; I’ll never be the biggest or strongest person in the room, but all of that is okay. I do what I do so I can live life the way I want to, and even though it took a long time to get here, that’s all that matters now.

My Asian Mental Health is an ongoing project that aims to share the mental health journeys and experiences of members of the Asian Diaspora. No matter where we are on our path of discovering and understanding our mental health, it always helps to know that we are never alone. We hope that people will be inspired, emboldened, and feel empowered to face their own mental health challenges through these stories. If you would also like to share your story with us you can do so by filling out this form.

By: Jed Chun

I wanted to touch on an issue that I’ve seen pop up a lot in Subtle Asian Mental Health: Parents and Families. This seems to be a very common topic that plays a large part in many of the stories that people have shared, often negatively, as major contributors to the development of many mental health issues. As many have pointed out, parents/relatives/families (from here on out PRFs), often cause a great deal of anguish and contribute greatly to our experiences of depression, anxiety, etc. For many it has taken the form of a wide range of abuse, often misnomered as “for our own good.” I want to focus specifically on the PRFs that “mean well,” but fail to communicate it clearly to us. I hope this not misinterpreted as being parent apologist propaganda as I do not want to invalidate anyone’s experiences, but from everything I’ve read, I wanted to make a few comments to help make sense of some of these experiences.

Asian Intergenerational Trauma

If you’re reading this, it is likely that you’re also part of the Asian Diaspora – the scattering of (Asian) people from their homelands to different parts of the world – and that your PRFs were/are immigrants. When they migrated, they brought with them their widely accepted customs and cultures into a new country, where they became the minority, and passed along some of those generational beliefs things onto us. As a result, their offspring (us) share very similar experiences, such as racism, exclusion, and questions of self-identity and belonging, and perhaps more recently, uniqueness and unity; the “Asian- (insert current nationality here) experience.” Yet, while we bond over memes, language jokes, and boba, we seemingly have very different experiences and views compared to our PRFs.

Many of us, consciously or unconsciously/learned or unlearned, seem to bask in the ideals of individualism, independence, and democracy (or socialism) carried by the wings of capitalism into a better life than our PRFs grew up in. Whereas many of them continue to carry with them their Eastern (sometimes Confucian) ideals of collectivism, filial piety, and family first governance. We often find ourselves in the middle of these two ideals, having been influenced largely by our parents, while growing up in a culture that approaches things very differently. We experienced some of these differences in very tangible ways like being stuck at home practicing piano/doing homework while the other kids played outside. Or helping with the family business while other kids went home to eat snacks and watch afternoon cartoons. Or being forced to go to family gatherings with our annoying relatives and babysitting our cousins. Or Saturday mornings dedicated to (insert Asian language here) school and other structured activities. I bet many of you wondered, “Why can’t I just be ‘normal’?” That same sentiment continues to manifest itself in our lives. I see it in our stories, I feel it in our pain. It hovers like a dark cloud over the ways that we now reflect on our experiences of mental health and suffering as a result of the shame, neglect, abuse, and other underhanded tactics that our PRFs used/continue to use to try and reinforce their views as one of preeminence in our lives. Some of us try to scrub out the “abnormal,” others of us feel like they can’t escape it, and others simply embrace it as part of their existence, yet the thought remains:

“Why, can’t I just be normal?”

I don’t think there’s a short answer to this. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that most of our PRFs have/had no point of reference of Western positive role models, individual emotional needs, and child discipline that we were educated in. Or, maybe it’s something else – something deeper.

If you take the time to think about it, we’re not that far removed from events like the Vietnam War, Korean War, Rape of Nanjing, the Cultural revolution, European colonization, internment camps, Hiroshima/Nagasaki, Khmer Rogue and countless other atrocities. The reality is that many of PRFs have experienced trauma, heck immigrating itself can be traumatic. Our PRF’s also experienced the racism we did. Imagine for a second coming here, not knowing the language and having to start over from scratch, dealing with culture shock and identity loss, then compound that with the stoicism and importance of family that comes with Eastern thought. Perhaps it may start to become more clear that the irrational things that they do, are their own attempts at managing their trauma. Collectively we need to all be aware of these expressions of transgenerational trauma.

Some of the patterns they observed in Holocaust survivors and the way they interacted with their children may sound familiar to us: Indirect communication, secrets and silence, terrifying world view/attempts to anticipate disaster, lack of sense of belonging, guilt/victimization/submission, fear of external identifiers.

One that resonates most with me, and in the posts I’ve read, is the experience as Asian-(insert current nationality here)s is the terrifying world view. How often have we been berated about getting into a good school? Getting a certain kind of job? How often have concerns about our safety been the primary argument? Have you noticed how many of those jobs are often described as stable, well-paying, and respectable?

So much of our “subtle asian” identity was set into place so that we might have the social and economic resources be able to ride out the storms of economic, political, and social uncertainty – the traumas that our PRFs experienced that they did not want to pass unto us. Unfortunately, they ended up passing it onto us because they didn’t learn how to model it any other way.

One question I’m sure that plagues everyone is: How do we move forward?

We and our PRFs have been marginalized, excluded, and traumatized; we’ve hurt and been hurt by each other, so often that it feels so, familiar. So, “normal”. But, trauma shouldn’t be “normal,” but for so many of us, it’s our reality – and it is intrinsically tied to our identities as immigrants and/or the children of immigrants. Like I said before, none of these revelations can excuse or can justify the things we’ve experienced from our PRFs and we will have to continue to deal with that. But, we have something that our PRFs do not: the privilege of knowledge, research, and self-actualization.

So, what will we do with it? I feel like there are two paths. For some, they will vow to put their (and their PRFs’) trauma behind them and start fresh, taking what we know, what works, and avoiding the same mistakes in the future. The second path is to use this information to understand the previous generations and our PRFs’ so that we can begin to have the conversation about trauma, and maybe, one day we can overcome the traumas that ail us. Let’s not forget, we’re here because we all have a unique, Asian-(insert your nationality here) experience. It might be one that is ridden with trauma, but it is one that we can heal, together.

 

If you would like to read more about transgenerational trauma here are a few places to start:

Trauma Affecting Asian-Pacific Islanders in the San Francisco Bay Area

Trauma and Well-Being among Asian American Women

The Effect of Trauma Transmission: Psychosocial Development of Second-Generation Southeast Asian American College Students

Rachel Yehuda How Trauma and Resilience Cross Generations

How Trauma Is Carried Across Generations

About the Author

JED CHUN

Jed is a Marriage Family Therapist from California. He spends most of his time managing the Asian Mental Health Collective, and Asian Mental Health Professionals Facebook groups as well as this website. Some will say he’s just “here for the ride,” but we know that he’s passionate about tearing down the stigma associated with Asian mental health. When he’s got extra time you’ll likely find him eating, cooking, learning, and traveling, or simultaneously doing all of the above.