Connecting with Emotions as an Asian American (Dear Asian Therapist Series)
Dear Asian Therapist: I was never taught how to deal with my feelings. Where do I even start?
This blog post was written in collaboration with Asian Mental Health Collective for their social media series, Dear Asian Therapist. This blog is the expanded version of the Instagram post, linked here.
Understanding the Context
Many of us who grew up in an Asian household can resonate with the experience of having our emotions dismissed, minimized, or ignored by our families of origin. There are many possible societal, family systems, and individual differences that account for these experiences. On a societal level, collectivist cultures often place heavy value on group unity and harmony, which can lead to a cultural norm that unintentionally rewards individuals who suppress rather than express their emotions. For many Asians who immigrated to North America, or are 2nd generation Asian Americans/Canadians, there also may be a higher cultural focus on being performance or achievement oriented. The Model Minority Myth may also perpetuate this standard set for many Asian immigrants. As a result, getting good grades, having a stable, well paying job, or earning a higher education degree might take precedence over having our feelings validated or acknowledged. For me, “How you feel doesn’t matter, what we need to see are results,” was a phrase I heard a lot growing up.
Additionally, on a family systems level, there are other factors that may feed into the minimization of emotions. For example, if it is relevant, consider your family’s immigration story - How did your family end up settling down where they are now? Under what circumstances did they have to move? Some families immigrate to the West in search of higher education or better career opportunities. Others may have come to the West seeking refuge or safety. Moving away to an entirely different country is often a daunting, challenging, and anxiety inducing experience that often rewards outward portrayals of “strength” and “bravery”, rather than emotional vulnerability. We may also consider what types of historical, generational, and personal traumas the members of our family of origin have experienced up until present day. Following Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I appreciate how my own grandparents might not have had the opportunity to seek or value emotional safety, given the historical context in which they lived in China.
Finally, many individual characteristics can also be at play. Some people may just be biologically more predisposed to experience emotions for longer amounts of time, at higher intensities, and may struggle more with returning to their baseline state of regulation. Some individuals may share a similar emotional temperament with their parents and siblings, but many individuals have a different or even mismatched temperament from their family members, which creates a breeding ground for (often unintentional) emotional invalidation. The interactions too between a person and their family environment can further shape how they express and experience emotions. For example, I personally grew up in a family system that rewarded high “self-control” around emotions. I remember as a child, when I would encounter emotionally activating situations, I would simply smile and hold my tongue, even though internally I felt intense rage, frustration, or sadness. I was often praised as having “thick skin” and “strong self-control”. This feedback cycle between my environment and my behavior taught my brain in the moment that “Suppressing emotions is good.”
A Note on Alexithymia
Alexithymia is a trait where someone struggles to identify, describe, and connect with their emotional experiences. Research indicates that alexithymia rates may be higher in Asian cultures compared to Western research samples (Ng & Chan, 2020), and is likely to be influenced by cultural and family norms. If you are wondering if you have alexithymia, consider using screeners like this one to learn more about yourself.
If you struggle to name or identify your emotions, tools like a feelings wheel, graphic, or emotion model chart can be a helpful supplement in your emotion exploration journey. Below are some free tools that I like to use in my own clinical and personal therapy work:
A Note on Shame
When we talk about emotions, I think it can be important to highlight the role and experience of shame in Asian culture. Asian cultures tend to be shame-based, and this is likely related to the collectivist cultural norms around valuing conformity and group one-ness. As a shame-based culture, there is often a high degree of concern around conformity and saving face.
Shame is the emotion we feel when we believe we have violated society’s values or norms, and is ultimately a fear of being judged or rejected by others. In the context of a collectivist society, it makes a lot of logical sense why shame would play an important function in maintaining social harmony. However, shame can be an incredibly uncomfortable emotion to feel and tolerate. Oftentimes our unhelpful or even destructive behaviors are rooted in an effort to escape from shame. Like any other emotion though, shame is part of our emotional world, and is something that you can learn to observe, describe, and ride out.
So, How Can I Start Connecting with My Emotions?
Now that we’ve considered some of the reasons and contexts behind why emotions might be under-validated in Asian cultures, the natural next question is - what can we do about it? Mental health therapy approaches like Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) have tools that can support you to build your relationship with your emotions and internal experiences. DBT is an evidence-based treatment developed by Marsha Linehan that conceptualizes many mental health challenges as a consequence of unregulated emotions (Linehan, 1993).
In a DBT framework, we believe that many behaviors that people seek to change in therapy, like self-harm, substance use, food restriction, or experiences like tumultuous relationships, low self-confidence, or a sense of emptiness or numbness, all can be rooted back to a problem of emotion dysregulation. For instance, someone may turn to drinking alcohol in order to escape feelings of sadness or embarrassment. In the short term, alcohol and being in a state of intoxication reduces the experience of painful emotions. In the long term however, it prevents us from learning other ways to tolerate the discomfort, or communicates to ourselves that we are unable to survive the pain.
DBT also offers a curriculum that covers four modules of skills - the modules are mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness (Linehan, 2015). The goal of learning these skills is to educate ourselves and to teach us new behaviors and ways of handling a situation in our lives. Below are a few DBT skills I want to highlight that you can try to apply in your own emotional wellness journey:
Mindfulness
Mindfulness skills are incredibly helpful in our journey of first gaining awareness of our emotional experiences. If I am trying to reduce my anxiety, I first need to be aware in the moment when my anxiety has increased, what caused it to increase, and what I can do to change the experience of the anxiety in the moment. If I don’t even notice when I feel anxious until after the fact, then that takes away my power to act differently or accept my anxiety in the moment!
You can learn the basics of the Mindfulness “What” skills by watching this video here.
Model of Emotions
Understanding something is often the step to changing it. The DBT Model of Emotions (in the Emotion Regulation module) breaks down the various components that go into an emotion. The components include: 1. The event that prompted the emotion, 2. Your interpretations of the event, 3. Body sensations associated with the emotion, 4. The urges you feel as a result of the emotion, 5. Your external displays of the emotion, and 6. The aftereffects of the emotion.
I personally found it helpful to understand the various components of an emotion, because it gave me more language and points of “contact” I could latch onto to identify and experience an emotion. For example, while I used to struggle with identifying the emotion of “anxiety”, my brain was sensitive to sensations like changes in heart rate and chest tightness. These physiological sensations helped me increase my awareness of the emotion I was experiencing.
This video walks through the Model of Emotions with a case example!
Accumulating Positives
The Accumulating Positives skill is an Emotion Regulation skill that is part of the acronym ABC PLEASE, which are a set of skills that help reduce our vulnerability to our emotions. Learning to get in touch with your emotions isn’t just restricted to the painful or uncomfortable emotions, it also includes the pleasant ones! Accumulating Positives in the short term instructs us to build up our positive emotion bank account by engaging in pleasant activities throughout the week. Engaging in this skill can be a great first step in engaging with your emotions, because you can mindfully observe and savor the pleasant emotions you feel when you engage in pleasant activities. Here is a video that explains the Accumulating Positives Short Term skill in more detail.
In the long term, we can Accumulate Positives by setting and taking action on long term values-based goals. Taking measurable steps towards important goals we want to achieve in our lives can increase our sense of hope and optimism for the future, and is another pleasant set of emotions that you can mindfully savor and experience. Here is a video that explains the Accumulating Positives Long Term skill in more detail.
Mindfulness of Current Emotion (The Wave)
The Wave Skill, also known as the Mindfulness of Current Emotions skill, is an acceptance focused skill in the Emotion Regulation module. As the name implies, this skill focuses on mindfully experiencing our emotions without trying to change them, riding our emotions like a surfer would ride a wave. This skill is my personal favorite, because the focus is on accepting and experiencing an emotion as is, rather than trying to change, suppress, or distract from it. Mindfulness of Current Emotion instructs us to look inwards during an intense emotional experience, and to observe and describe the internal experiences we feel around the emotion, including our body sensations and our action urges. Allow the emotion to exist without trying to drag it out or cut it short. You might even imagine inviting the emotion in for a cup of coffee!
This video walks you through the steps of riding the emotion wave in more detail.
Citations:
Linehan, M. M. (1993). Cognitive-behavioral treatment of borderline personality disorder. Guilford Press.
Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT® skills training manual (2nd ed.). The Guilford Press
Ng, C. S. M., & Chan, V. C. W. (2020). Prevalence and associated factors of alexithymia among Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong. Psychiatry research, 290, 113126. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2020.113126
About the Author
Adora (she/her) is a licensed clinical mental health counselor associate and owner of Spring Day Therapy PLLC. In the past she has worked in various mental health settings with different age groups, populations, and levels of care. In the therapy room, Adora operates from a DBT-informed and culturally-responsive lens to support clients in working through challenges and create real-life changes. Her work is further enhanced by her passion and training in supporting Autistic individuals and providing culturally responsive care for Asian populations.
Outside the therapy room, Adora has experience working in mental health research, and is also the founder and president of FAUNA Mental Health Foundation, an Asian mental health advocacy nonprofit. She currently leads an international team of volunteers and interns to provide accessible mental health resources through their website and workshops with community partners.
Interested in receiving therapy with Spring Day Therapy? Fill out an interest form below to schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation with Adora!
