Crying over paper cuts: Reflections on how culture impacts mental health
Photo from Hai Anh
I remember calling my mum the summer before I began my first year of university, doubting my decision to pursue Psychology.
"I'm so different from the people here, mum. I'm not sure I'll be able to empathise with anyone if I ever become a psychologist. I already flinch when I hear about white people putting their parents in nursing homes, do you think I’ll be able to stay non-judgemental if they bring up all their other problems?”
My mum laughed gently. To her, I was already as Westernised as I could possibly be. I had no haggling or negotiation skills, I wasn’t khéo léo with my words, and of course, I had lost all the resilience and endurance she believed ran through our ancestral line. I would cry over a paper cut and become annoyingly dysfunctional if I had less than eight hours of sleep. To her, my values and lifestyle already fit neatly into what it meant to be 'Westernised'.
Without taking my concern too seriously, she replied, "You’ll probably be so Australian by the time you finish university that you’ll feel like a foreigner when you visit Vietnam.”
Flash forward three years: my closest friends are still mainly Vietnamese, and sometimes, I still struggle to convey my thoughts fluently in English. Yet instead of worrying about whether I can empathise with clients from an individualistic culture, I’ve become more aware of how ineffective it can be to apply Western models of mental health to BIPOC communities. It’s easy to suggest “setting clear boundaries” if you weren’t raised by an Asian tiger mum.
This realisation sparked my drive to explore how culture and history shape mental health for people from culturally diverse backgrounds.
Along this journey, I was fortunate to complete my placement at An Tâm Coaching and Psychology, a practice dedicated to providing culturally sensitive therapy. As part of my placement, I conducted interviews exploring what encourages and prevents BIPOC from accessing mental health services.
The responses I received reminded me how vital it is to raise awareness about mental health in BIPOC communities. Almost everyone agreed that people in their cultural communities had limited understanding of mental health, and many emphasised the stigma that discouraged them from seeking support. Like many of the people I spoke with, I too was often told to “toughen up” during times of adversity, and the idea of seeking mental health support never occurred to me until I felt like my head was about to burst.
What saddened me most was that caring for one’s mental health was something people only figured out in their twenties, instead of being something nurtured from childhood. It feels almost ironic that we learn about “mindfulness” and “meditation” — practices rooted in Asian cultures — through contemporary Western wellness culture, rather than from our own parents. In fact, almost everyone admitted they had never spoken to their parents about mental health, fearing that they simply “wouldn’t get it.”
In that sense, I know I am an exception. My mum practices mindfulness in her daily life and was the person that encouraged me to study psychology, hoping that I might one day learn how to care for my mental health better than she could, and be able to guide others on their journeys too. I sometimes call my mum just to tell her how grateful I am that a core part of my identity, being Asian, can become a strength in developing cultural reflexivity as a future psychologist. Hopefully, if I can make it through this rigorous academic journey without burning out, I can become the kind of psychologist who reminds people that it’s okay to cry over a paper cut, and that needing rest when you’re weary doesn’t make you weak.
– Written by Hai Anh Le