{ Recap } January events: Talk on Asian mental health (NY)
JESS.
In January, I gave a talk for the NY Coalition for Asian American Mental Health on the benefits of journaling as a tool for emotional navigation. It was held at the NYU School of Social Work.
Sidebar: Mental health in the Asian-American community is something I’ve been passionate about for many years. In both personal and career, I’ve aimed to fill whatever gaps I could:
created a searchable database for mental health providers that work with Asian youth
helped launch and lead an Asian Anti-Violence Network that brought together organizations, government agencies, and individuals in NYC who encounter Asian survivors of domestic violence, human trafficking, and sexual assault
incorporated mental health frameworks into all my direct service roles
attended a ton of conferences, coalition meetings, talks, etc.
I’ve been a member of the NYCAAMH for a few years now, attending many of their monthly professional development meetings. Recently, NYCAAMH has been focusing on non-conventional therapeutic methods, and I was delighted that they would host me.
On the coldest day of the month, the room was packed early with mental health practitioners. They were either Asian or working for the Asian community. After my presentation, I received a lot of interesting questions. My favorite one was:
How can practitioners encourage their older immigrant patients to talk about their emotions, much less journal about them?
This is a challenge that comes up often in the Asian community. Studies show that older Asian adults most consistently express psychological distress/depression to their primary care physicians as physical symptoms, and talking about emotions are often difficult, not received well, or carry stigma.
We talked about the value in teaching Observation Without Narration (I’ll do a video on it soon!), and how practitioners can encourage their clients to observe where their distress shows up on their body. We also revisited the concept of emotions as being (E)nergy in (motion), and how the concept of energy is highly prioritized in Eastern medicine and practices. We also talked about the importance of finding indirect ways to approach trauma.
I was also grateful for the feedback I received. A participant shared that long-sought questions were answered in the workshop that weren’t during school or supervision meetings. Another participant, who later attended my regular journaling workshop, expressed that she opened up about her own mental health experiences to the group.
I’m really grateful for the opportunity to have had this community conversation about journaling, emotions, and mental health and see that it was well received and much-wanted in the Asian-American mental health community. Thank you so much for having me.
PS: Another quick burst of joy: Charlene (my former volunteer) and Karen, (my former student and her mentee) surprised me by attending the workshop! I hadn’t advertised the event widely, but Charlene was a member of NYCAAMH. Karen rescheduled her trip back to college to be there, and I was so moved by the gesture. Thank you both for being so wonderful. Meant the world to me.
