Second Gen Struggles - When your parents don’t understand mental health
“Just pray about it, don’t talk about it, that’s shameful!” These are just common phrases that children of immigrants hear when discussing mental health. I mean how could you be sad when you have everything your parents fought for, right?
That’s the second-generation immigrant struggle being caught between two worlds. Your parents see mental health through the lens of survival they kept going because they had to, you’re trying to thrive not just to survive and that requires different ways to help yourself.
Some of your parents may dismiss therapy as ‘talking to strangers about your family business’, they might believe depression is a choice and anxiety just means that you lack faith. These aren’t crazy views; they’re shaped by cultures where mental illnesses were unfortunately stigmatised and accessing care wasn’t always an option and occasionally showing weaknesses meant real danger.
Living between these two worlds can cause real stress, as you’re navigating to succeed academically and professionally but you’re also trying to obtain majority of these cultural norms. Sometimes it may feel as if you are carrying their trauma along with yours and that can feel like a lot.
That is why it’s important to have some type of balance it’s important to find community support outside your family also, such as friends who may share your experience whether they come from the same culture or religious backgrounds or if they’re just a second-generation immigrant like yourself. As soon as you find a community that you can talk through the struggles with, you’ll start to feel like you’re not alone and a lot of that stress that you’ve been carrying all of them years will feel like a weight lifted off your back.