Jenny Wang Helps Us Give Ourselves Permission to Come Home 

By Andrea Hwang and Alexis Constantino

Photos Courtesy of Asians for Mental Health

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MAY/JUNE 2023 BY LOTUS MAG

Dr. Jenny Wang is a Taiwanese American clinical psychologist based in Houston. Her work explores the intersectionality of Asian American identity, social justice, mental health, and trauma. As the eldest daughter and a child of immigrants, she was inspired to pursue a mental health-related career to seek better ways to describe the world around us. The depth of our conversation and topics covered was moving. Here are some of the highlights.

Can you share a bit about your background and how you came to be a mental health professional?

I went to college to study to become an accountant and that was kind of the thing that my parents felt was the most stable coming from their background, so business was really a singular focus for me. I ended up applying for a five year Master's accounting program but entering my junior year, I was just like, “I can't do this”, and it was one of the first times of my life where I had such a strong feeling about something. I think for so much of my life up until that point I hadn't really been encouraged to think about what I wanted and yet, I had a very strong sense of what I didn't want. And so at the time, a friend - now my husband - was like, “You should try psychology.” And after I took that Psych 101 course I was just like, “This is it. This is the thing.”

So it really kind of changed my path at that point. I dropped out of the master's accounting program and still finished with a business major, but ended up taking all the course work and preparation for graduate school applications. I think what was really powerful about this field was this realization that there were so many experiences that I did not have words for. Especially being the eldest daughter and a child of immigrants, watching so many of my family interactions or community interactions and feeling things, but never having the words just to describe them and then realizing that there was a whole field dedicated to understanding these dynamics. I think that was really what kind of drove my interest at that point.

Tell us about your book.

I think the idea of writing a book was always something that I had kind of dreamed about, but very much had in the background. I have two young kids, I have work and a career, and it was hard to envision having the energy and the time to write a book. But when 2019 going into the pandemic happened, and with the rise of anti- asian violence and so much going on post-George Floyd, there were so many things that I felt were really driving me and pushing me to find ways to make mental health more accessible. For me, the grounding thought of this entire book has been that one day my own children will be young adults and they will be sitting in their college lecture halls, with their friends, and navigating through many of the same struggles that we have.

This book was for them as an enduring kind of message and enduring sense of being able to hear my voice. It was also for our community because I think that in the realm of mental health it's always felt like so foreign of an idea. Like what is mental health? We don't do that. That's not something we do. I think I wanted this book to feel like a love letter. I wanted it to feel loving and gentle and compassionate. So, since the book has come out, people have shared with me so many of the nuances, the anecdotes, the examples they had felt through much of their lives, but didn't have words for and didn't realize that so many other people felt the same.

So I think that was the hope. It was that we could take mental health, something so foreign to us in our community, and actually bring it into a much more intimate space and normalize that it is something that we all have that we can work to protect and that we can really support through support and community, either mental health support or communal support.

You mention that it is important to teach children that you do not have to comply with adults because they are older. What does this look like?

So within Asian culture, there is a really beautiful part of how hierarchy kind of manifests. When I honor my parents or I bow for my grandparents, that's something that is so beautiful and such a part of Asian culture that I never want to go away. At the same time though, we can see that hierarchy can lead us to situations where there might be an abuse of power and privilege. People get harmed and often it is the people who are most vulnerable that are harmed the greatest.

Now that I have my own children, one of the things that we try to teach them is that authority is there, provided that it is to keep you safe, protect you, and teach you. But the moment that authority becomes a source of shame, punishment, or retaliation, then this authority needs to be questioned. So what I'm trying to do is to teach my kids to be good decision makers and judges of character versus being obedient and compliant, which is what I believe was modeled for many generations not just within Asian culture, but across many cultures. And in many ways, I feel like this almost fits within the stereotype of the model minority. The “let's not rock the boat, let's not disrupt the system, just keep your head down and keep working.”

So when I think about even raising kids and having these conversations, it's not about disrespect. I'm actually asking them to think about all their relationships with a critical lens, because there are relationships that are affirming and encouraging, and then there are relationships that are punitive, that tear them down, and they deserve better than that. And so in those relationships, I want them to feel empowered to tell safe adults to report harm and also to say no against behaviors that are dangerous.

For adults who still feel they need to comply with their parents, are there any pieces of advice you could give on how to navigate a better relationship with their parents or other parental figures in general?

When you think about a young person's development, there's sometimes conflict because they’re learning how to be separate but connected to their parents. So we start to kind of individuate from our parents, which is a natural and necessary process for development. But if conflict is seen as a bad thing or seen as disrupting the peace and we take on the role of being the peacekeeper to avoid making the other person upset or adjust to make them happy, then guess what? We start to lose sense of what it is that we want and what we need. And if you don't know or if you are not trained to understand that facet of yourself, then it makes it harder and harder to self advocate and to communicate with the people around us about what it is that we want. It's not to say that individuation always has to have conflict, but I think we forget that our parents are human beings too. They have their own stories and narratives around the idea of conflict as well and they might also have been taught that conflict is bad.

There's a really common pattern in some families where conflict is suppressed, everybody just kinda tiptoes around each other, resentment builds, we get more and more frustrated, but nobody says anything, and then BAM. There's some kind of triggering event where there's yelling, screaming, crying, lots of emotionality, and then the next day, it's like it never happened. Those types of interactions start to teach us that conflict is bad because it's chaos, feels like devastation, and feels like disconnection with the people that we love. But actually, conflict is a negotiation between the people we love and the things that we want for our lives and in this world. So if we see it as a negotiation, then we learn that skill so that one day, you can tolerate the discomfort that that negotiation process brings up. But if you have never practiced that throughout your life, you will very much struggle to tolerate the discomfort of saying, “This is what I want.” So this has a pervasive impact on so many facets of your life.

Now, I always say that most of us don't know how to handle conflict because we've never learned the skills. Many of our parents never learn them from their parents and so forth. So these skills, just like how intergenerational patterns can be passed down, so can intergenerational skills that have been built up. With my kids, sometimes they want to play video games but I don't really want them to. Instead of saying, “No, you cannot,” I say, “Okay, what do you think is reasonable? What do you think we should do about the fact that I'm not comfortable with you playing video games right now?” So instead of just killing the request, we negotiate. We practice and practice and practice so that one day, when somebody wants to negotiate something with them, they don't freeze up or tense up. They realize that this is a natural and normal part of human interaction.

Sometimes it feels like our culture is sort of lost with each generation. It’s something that we don’t want to happen, but it’s almost inevitable. Do you have any thoughts about that?

Yes, it is [almost inevitable] and it can be a source of grief. For example, my husband and I both speak Taiwanese and Mandarin but our kids really don't anymore. Mandarin was my daughter's first language but when she started school, it just started kind of falling away. I remember feeling a lot of guilt, blame, and so much sadness that somehow I had failed her, that I was not pushing this forward, or I wasn't encouraging her to continue. It almost felt like in order to stay connected to our culture, we had to force that one requirement. But finally, I had to step back and say, “Actually, our cultural identity is so much more than that one singular facet.” I had to realize that perhaps I had a different option for how I wanted to maintain cultural identity and pride in our kids. I think grieving the loss of that, that they do not necessarily speak Mandarin or really understand it that well, but also realizing that I had options and they had options to seek it out in the future gave me some sense of comfort in the midst of that grief.

I think what was really powerful for me to observe is that my kids’ Asian or Taiwanese identity is already way stronger than I ever had as a child. Recently, my daughter had an international day at her school, where every family can set up a booth about their culture and we set up a Taiwanese booth every year, and at the end of the day I said to her, “You know, we do this because we want you to feel proud of who you are and where you came from.” She looks at me and she goes, “I already am,” and I think that is the piece that I want to preserve. It is much more intangible perhaps and abstract, like culture is not just one or ten things that we practice. It is a felt sense that I belong somewhere, I came from somewhere, and I'm connected to people that are similar to me.

Do you have any advice for someone who is looking for therapy, looking for mental health resources, but may feel limited and have little knowledge, especially coming from an Asian household?

One of the things I encourage people to think about is what is your “why” for pursuing therapy? I think everybody thinks about the possibility of therapy in all different contexts. But we also forget that there's a facet of therapy where people pursue therapy because they want to grow and learn. It's in a positive frame. And so often one of my first questions to potential clients is what are your goals for therapy? How would you know that therapy was working for you, that it was helping you move in the right direction? And the follow up question would be, how would your life change if therapy was working? And once you've understood that, once you've defined your why or your goal, then that helps you identify the specialty or the type of provider you might be looking for. But if you're working on having healthy communication patterns and better relationships, then you might find a family therapist or a couples therapist. So utilize that goal as the base from which you then start to filter out options for yourself. I would start to look at the options available by the State that you’re in. Asians for Mental Health, Asian Mental Health Collective, and The Asian American Psychological Association also have directories you can look at.

Now, when we think about therapy, we think about access. Does your university have free counseling sessions? Does your work have resources available to you? Are there ways that you can access therapy at lower costs? And then you think about virtual or in person format, which is a new thing post-pandemic. So those are things to think about and to ask potential therapists. Finally, I would say to consider the fit between you and your therapist. We're talking about interpersonal clinical fit. How do you feel when you speak to your therapist or potential therapist? Do you feel safe and heard? Does this person seem open to feedback? Could you offer a contradictory idea or response and the therapist not take it personally? Those are all those intangible things that I think we have a gut sense about.

Ideally, the client should feel fully empowered to decide that it's not a fit anymore and consider finding somebody else. One of the biggest barriers or hurdles is stigma. It's so hard sometimes to to step over that line of, “If I seek mental health treatment, what does that mean about me? Would that be shameful if my family found out all of those things?” Nobody needs to know you’re in therapy, especially if you're over 18 and you can consent. Maybe you will have your chosen group of people that can support you on that journey, but it is something where you can keep private. And my final question related to stigma is, what is the cost of staying the same? Can you see yourself in the same place one, five, ten years from now? And if that costs pretty high, then maybe it's worth considering getting the support that you need.

You have such a presence on social media and we are inspired by your content! Can you share your process on how you grew your online presence and what you want others to take away from your advocacy work on social media?

So when I started the account, there was not any goal to make it some “platform.” I still barely know how to use Instagram and social media, but I had two primary goals. One was to identify and find Asian American therapists so that we could start building a directory, and the second goal was to center Asian American or Asian diaspora voices in the area of mental health. When I started my account in September 2019, there were so many social media accounts that were mental health focused, but there were very few that really spoke to the unique nuances of the Asian American or Asian immigrant experience. I soon realized that this account allowed people to start to realize they weren't alone and begin to put some words or psychological concepts to things that they had felt much of their lives and never could really formulate or express in a direct way.

I think it has just been a sense of authenticity and a sense of consistency, and I think that I've always at the very least tried to remain very real with people. At the same time, I have to fully recognize that I'm a working mom, wife, and all these other things. I have my own limits and barriers and I have to be okay with that. For my own mental health, this has to be a space that I can walk into, and also walk away from without feeling like I'm going to somehow miss out on something or that I'll become obsolete.

As a young person in today’s political climate and society with so much going on, how can we show up for others and begin to take space in the world as Asian Americans?

This is a big question, but such an important one, I think especially for young people. I would say that for the longest time my conceptualizations of taking up space were very male, white, and dominant. This loud, more aggressive kind of overbearing image would come to mind and I think at the end of the day, that's not who I am. That's not the type of person that I want to be in the spaces that I inhabit.

So when I consider the idea of taking up space, especially coming from Asian culture that often is more connected and more outwardly oriented, I think about taking up space in the community. I think about taking up space through activation.

What has been so inspiring post-pandemic is to see this generation of young people such as yourselves saying, “I'm going to use my talents, my skills, my abilities in ways to be seen and visible on behalf of my community. And I'm going to do the difficult work of understanding my identity, my lineage, my generational stories, and using that as a source of power for all of us.”

So taking up space for me on a personal level is just tolerating the fear and discomfort long enough to let myself be seen and heard. And I think we can all do that, even if it's on a small scale. We don't need to have a massive platform or we don't need to be so kind of visible, but we're already touching people's lives in the conversations that we have or the encouragement that we offer.

Andrea Hwang is a content creator for Lotus Magazine and a public health buff. By day, she serves as a Project Coordinator at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. She raves about Asian American advocacy, leading a study which will be the first national survey of Asian immigrant women’s health. After hours, you’ll find her sweating out at a new workout class, binging the latest dating show, or dancing her heart out.

Alexis Constantino is one of the co-founders of Lotus Magazine where she enjoys working with the team as well as connecting with people within the community. She is also a local piano teacher in San Diego, teaching kids from elementary to high school and anyone who's willing to learn! In her free time, Alexis loves immersing herself in books, traveling to new places, and eating great food.