“You know I’m here for you, but I can’t be your therapist.”
My college boyfriend was the first person to nudge me toward seeing a licensed professional.
There’s a strong stigma around therapy in the Asian American community. As the child of Korean immigrants, I was taught to save face, not to air any dirty laundry and most importantly to never talk badly about your family. So the concept of downloading the nitty gritty story of your life to a complete stranger was not only humiliating but unacceptable to them.
In high school, I remember telling my parents I was feeling stressed from schoolwork, tennis season and college applications. My dad responded with his words of encouragement: “Stress is in your imagination.”
