Episode 128: [Step 4] Breaking the Silence on Mental Health
In this episode of the F*ck Saving Face podcast, Judy Tsuei shares her personal journey through therapy and mental health, particularly focusing on the challenges faced by Asian Americans.
She discusses her struggles with eating disorders, the importance of finding the right therapist, and the cultural stigma surrounding mental health in her community.
Judy emphasizes the need for self-advocacy and the power of sharing personal stories to empower others. She also highlights the significance of addressing intergenerational trauma and the role of mental health care in healing.
Sound Bites
"I wish I could go to therapy."
"Hurt people hurt people."
Takeaways
Therapy can be a crucial step in healing.
Cultural background can impact the therapy experience.
Finding the right therapist is essential for effective care.
Mental health resources are often seen as a luxury.
Asian Americans face unique challenges in accessing mental health care.
Sharing personal stories can empower others to seek help.
Intergenerational trauma affects mental health.
Self-advocacy is vital in the journey to healing.
The stigma around mental health can prevent individuals from seeking help.
Creating a supportive community is essential for healing.
Episode Highlights
00:00 The Journey to Therapy and Healing
08:10 Advocating for Mental Health in Asian Communities
10:04 Empowering Through Personal Stories and Resources
Transcript:
Judy Tsuei (00:02.668)
Welcome to the F*ck Saving Face podcast where we're empowering mental and emotional health for Asian Americans and voices of color by breaking through taboo topics. Life may not always be pretty, but it is indeed beautiful. Make your story beautiful today. This week's episode is an interview and here we are in Spain.
Judy Tsuei (00:02.679)
Welcome to the Fuck Saving Face podcast where we're empowering mental and emotional health for Asian Americans and voices of color by breaking through taboo topics. Life may not always be pretty, but it is indeed beautiful. Make your story beautiful today. Step four of how to disappoint your parents in 10 shameless steps. What are we going to talk about? We are going to talk about therapy. And this is something that I have spent decades now in.
In and out, I definitely started going to therapy when I realized I had an eating disorder, but it was actually a while after I realized I had it. So it started in high school. I didn't realize that I was just slowly no longer eating, and I was responsible for packing my siblings' lunches, and I would have them overfilling so that you couldn't fold the paper bag over.
But for me, I would have a slice of white bread and an apple, and that's the only thing that I would eat all day. I started running. We went to Chinese school every Saturday. My mom was a Chinese school teacher, and I started running to school because the school was also where my junior high was. And it was probably a mile and a half, maybe two. And in Chinese culture, we say face, so we don't talk about anything. But the Chinese school teacher
saw me one Saturday, pulled me aside and asked me, what's wrong with you? And I had no idea. Well, I I knew what she was talking about, but I just had no idea. She was probably the first person who even acknowledged that I had been losing weight. We weren't even close. I wasn't even a good student. But she pulled me aside to ask me, and I just brushed it off like, nothing. I don't know what you're talking about. So then I was starving myself and didn't realize why I was doing it.
that later on I would discover in therapy that it was a sense of control. And it wouldn't be until I watched an after-school special, which was warning you against bulimia, that I realized it even existed. And I thought, my God, I could eat and throw up and not gain weight? Okay. So that started this whole entire decade and a half of bulimia, compulsive overeating, compulsive exercising, restriction, anorexia, the whole thing, and a lot of body dysmorphia.
Judy Tsuei (02:21.136)
So I finally made my way to the other side of the world. I was living in China and my eating disorder had gotten really bad at that point. Along the way, I tried to go to therapy, but I remember one therapist asking me in my early 20s, how often do you binge and perch? And I said, I don't know, a few times a day. I think that was my answer, either that or at the time it might've been a few times a week. And she said, that's not that bad. And intuitively, innately, I thought, isn't doing it at all bad?
So this is why I advocate to make sure that you vet your therapist and that you find someone who cares about you and is invested in your care and is willing to work with you when you have different core beliefs. I also didn't know until recently, I would say the past couple of years, that I could even ask or search for a therapist who came from the same cultural background because then I'm able to go between Mandarin and English and
have her understand without my explaining it what it was like to grow up in the environment that I was in. So I highly believe in therapy and I didn't realize how much anger I was carrying, how much grief for a childhood that I never got to have because I was a parentified child. All of these things that I could only process because I was going to therapy. And before I decided to go, since I was living all the way on the other side of the world,
I had stopped getting my period. I could feel my heart beating irregularly. And I just knew if I continue to stay here in China, I will die. And it wasn't a compelling enough reason to go back. But thankfully I had friends coming to visit me in Shanghai. One of them was my ex-boyfriend. And with their help, I went back to the States and it was indirect help. They didn't realize that I was using them as a crutch to get back.
I wasn't talking to them about my eating disorder. It wasn't anything like that. And in fact, it was almost as though my ex-boyfriend and I rekindled for just a brief moment. went all, my friends and I from Shanghai to Thailand and we flew back on the same day on different flights. And the second I got back, he had had a roommate, a female roommate and they ended up dating for a couple of years. And I felt like,
Judy Tsuei (04:46.873)
That brief moment of reconnection and compassion brought me back, but it was definitely heartbreaking once I was back. And I did a lot of things to have to advocate for my care. I didn't have any money really. I mean, I was working in China and making pretty much local wages. So I found an intensive outpatient program with a sliding scale. It was four days a week with therapists who were getting hours for getting their licensure. And
It was definitely even to get in, I needed a physical, but I didn't have health insurance. And so I had to go to the local free services health shelter center where I was standing in line with homeless people to get this physical. And even when I was calling the person on the phone, when I said I need to get a physical so that I can go into the screening disorder program, the person on the phone said, what, you're too fat? And just dealing with all of that, so many comments, so much feedback.
But I persisted and I got into my therapy program. And it was the first step that I needed to really process through a traumatic childhood and teenage hood and just floundering in life. I was living at home at the time and I had to deal with all of these feelings while living in the environment that caused them in the first place, which was hard to say the least.
My mother would be very volatile and she would come at me with everything from, need to forgive me right now, to just getting angry with me. And it was always about her and her emotions. And I actually just thought about this recently of how we were never able or allowed to have our emotions, but she was allowed to have all of her emotions and we were responsible for them. So I'm saying all of this because I...
believe in the power of mental and emotional health care. And when I started writing about these experiences, when I was living in Shanghai, I started blogging. And it just so happened that my friend from junior high, she was my best friend. She encouraged me to do it. And she said that she had started dating the co-founder of the site. So she asked if I wanted to get my blog on the homepage. And I was like, sure. And all of a sudden I had thousands of people reading my blog every day.
Judy Tsuei (07:12.493)
And I went from sharing about my experiences living abroad in China to sharing that I was battling this eating disorder and that I really needed to get help and how many people reached out to me. It happened to be a site that had a predominant amount of Asian Americans and they all said, I wish I could go to therapy. I wish I could process through all of the things that they were going through. And I realized that therapy or third party support is a luxury for so many people. So I'm grateful that there are opportunities now more.
hopefully increasingly cost effective methods for people to find care. But in my book proposal, when I was working on it, I definitely cited a lot of studies that Asian Americans had the Lotus utilization of mental health resources. And it's because of the shame, the stigma, because we can put up with so much, we can persevere and we put up with it until we can't anymore. So usually we are in very dire straits by that time. And this step,
Step four is about going to lots of therapy and talking about all your problems and making mental health a priority. That's why this podcast exists. It's why I do the work that I do. It's why I advocate for women of color, marginalized communities to build your personal brand, to have onus over your future, to create a life aligned to your core values. That's what this book is all about. So I hope that if it speaks to you and you'd like to see more of these resources come to light,
then you'll support the Kickstarter. There's 20 some odd days to go. And anyway, sharing it, backing it, know, good energy this way, it means so much to me. It truly is a passion project coming to life. And I just got back from Spain a couple days ago and now I'm getting ready to drive over to Arizona for a five day, all day in-person live coaching for my neuro-linguistic programming coaching program.
And all of this is so that I can be better equipped to serve the people who want to hire me and that I can do things with as much integrity and resources as I can because I remember what it felt like growing up to not have anybody to talk to, to not just have anybody to help me and how lonely that felt. And when I first started dating my partner, we've been together for five years and
Judy Tsuei (09:34.953)
He's a school administrator and I was telling him about my upbringing and he said, I really wish that you could talk to my students. So many of them go through what you went through. And I was like, what are you talking about? I thought in my mind, tiger parenting had finished when I grew up and he's like, no, it's alive and well. And I thought that I would have loved a resource like this growing up. I would have loved to be able to know that there were other ways to be in the world. That I wasn't alone, that someone else had gone through what I'd gone through or really hard times and was able to create a life that she loved.
And that is what all of us is about, providing resources. I put so much time and energy and heart into my podcast and I hope that it's a free resource to someone who needs the help. And so I hope that you find the support that you need and that you advocate for yourself in all ways. And I hope that I can do my part in creating support because again, I know what it feels like to not have it. It is so vital.
to have someone who will see you and hear you and know you and accept you. And the more that we heal, I've always believed that the more that we heal ourselves, especially with intergenerational trauma, the more that we can stop intergenerational trauma from happening because we are the most current endpoint of our ancestry. We are the most current evolution of our bloodline.
and we have so much power to shift and change the narrative and the story that moves forward from this point forward. So because I've experienced the fact that hurt people hurt people, I am doing my best to help encourage healing for everyone who's wounded in any way. And that is this episode because I gotta hit the road and I gotta drive to the next.
part of my training and the next evolution of my week, and I'm just wishing you so much support in your journey and your path. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you next week.
Judy Tsuei (11:44.163)
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you'd like to support me and this show, please go to iTunes and leave your review. It means so much to me and it'll help others find this podcast. I'll catch you in the next episode. And if you'd like to stay in touch between now and then, please visit wildheartedwords.com and sign up for my weekly newsletter. I've had people share with me that it's the best thing to arrive in their inbox all week. Aloha.
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Keywords: Asian Americans, mental health, emotional health, parenting, neurodiversity, empathy, cultural identity, self-acceptance, personal growth, family dynamics
