If you’re part of the Asian diaspora, psilocybin therapy can help you work through challenging cultural identity issues.
What does it mean to be Asian? And what does it mean to an Asian person living in a predominantly white and westernized society?
I am an ethnic Chinese Singaporean who lives in the United States. Singapore, the country of my birth, is a highly anglicized, post-colonial nation. It’s a young country that only gained its independence from Britain in 1965. The language of instruction in Singapore schools is English and kids from my generation (I’m a Gen Xer) grew up watching “The Wonder Years”, “21 Jump Street”, and MTV, and listening to Guns N' Roses and Madonna. Many of us learnt Mandarin as a second language at school, but most of us knew very little about Chinese culture or the “middle kingdom” where our grandparents, great grandparents and ancestors came from.
In my teens and twenties, I lived in Australia and the United Kingdom and have spent many years of my adult life in America (first in Boston, then Portland, where I now live with my Caucasian, American husband). I have many Asian friends who, similar to me, find themselves straddling two or more cultures, constantly trying to find a balance honoring both Eastern and Western values and worldviews.
When I was a teenager in Singapore, I had a good friend named Dan. His parents were Singaporeans who had migrated to Australia when they were young. Born in Australia, Dan is a second generation Asian Australian. He once told me that because he spent so much of his early childhood in the company of white Australian friends at school, as a teenager, he would feel a sense of incongruence whenever he looked in the mirror and saw the face of an Asian boy looking back at him. “I just didn’t feel Asian. Who I was and how I looked didn’t match”, he had told me.
“Who I am and how I look just don’t match”. This is the crux of the identity crisis that many second, third and higher generation Asian Americans live with. Race and culture shape how we see ourselves and our place in the world, and sometimes unresolved conflict as it pertains to culture can cause psychological distress or dissonance that impedes our ability to flourish and feel at ease in our own skins. At the risk of overgeneralizing, I’ve observed – in myself and in my Asian friends – certain psychological challenges which show up frequently within the Asian diaspora.
Being hard on oneself
In Asian cultures, in particular the Sinitic cultures of East Asia, there is a strong emphasis on academic and career achievement, and the message to most Asian children is that good grades and becoming a high earner should be one’s priority in life. This, coupled with old school discipline that is also common in Asian families, creates high levels of neuroticism among Asians, along with a tendency to be overly task-focused and self-critical. Because of an over emphasis on work ethics and the importance of “always being of use” while growing up, Asians can sometimes find it challenging to relax and be kind to themselves.
Familial guilt
The Confucian value of filial piety is common in Asian cultures, so Asians often grow up feeling a strong sense of obligation to please their parents and sometimes their extended family members too. In many Asian cultures, children are expected to support their parents financially, or at least give them a monthly allowance as a sign of respect. Individuals growing up in Asian households are often aware that they’re expected to meet certain cultural expectations with regards to career, marriage, starting a family, and also looking after their parents in their old age. Members of the Asian diaspora who do not practice filial piety, or who fall short in one way or another, may experience strong feelings of guilt which can pervade all their other relationships, including relationships with colleagues, employers, peers and significant others.
Discomfort around conflict & confrontation
Asians have frequently been stereotyped as meek and unassertive. Of course, this has been changing as Asians increasingly subscribe to the more westernized ideal of freedom of expression. Traditionally however, in Asian cultures, speaking up for oneself is not looked upon favorable, and the norm of filial piety assumes that mother and father’s authority ought never to be questioned. Collectivist Asian cultures tend to prioritize the well-being of the family and community over the individual, and this can result in Asian individuals feeling uncomfortable around being assertive or confrontational when they need to. This can lead to feelings of perceived victimization or oppression, which over time can have a detrimental effect on self-esteem.
If you’re an Asian who can identify with the above challenges, how can psilocybin be of help to you?
Psilocybin disrupts your Default Mode Network (DMN) – the parts of your brain responsible for maintaining your most entrenched belief systems about who you are, including powerful cultural messages about what is “good” or “bad”, “right” or “wrong”. By disrupting activity in established pathways of the DMN – in this case, the pathways that trigger anxiety and self-criticism, guilt or conflict avoidance – psilocybin can create new neural pathways that encourage more adaptive ways of perceiving culture and self.
While both individualistic and collectivist societies have their strengths and weaknesses, being caught in the middle can cause a person to feel confused about which set of values are truly aligned with who they are and who they are becoming. A psilocybin experience can help you work your through this confusion, assess which values you want to keep, and identify and let go of the ones that cause you undue distress.
There is great power in being able to sit comfortably with all your cultural identities. As someone living between cultures myself, I find great joy and strength in being able to embrace my Singaporean, Southeast Asian, Chinese and American identities without judging one as superior or inferior to another.
By Michele Koh Morollo, NUMEN NoSC Therapies
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