Guiding Your Family toward Emotional Health, episode 5 transcript
John Yoder: Greetings, everybody! Pastor John Yoder here. Welcome back to episode five of our series “Guiding Your Family towards Emotional Health.” And the subject that we want to talk about today is why people from various cultures around the world [00:01:00] are hesitant to talk about emotions, and specifically about the big issues of the day--depression and anxiety, suicide, social media. all of those things.
Now, in previous weeks, I introduced you to counselors and pastors whose backgrounds are Latino, Asian, and Caucasian. Today, we want to add to that African and Russian background counselors. We're going to allow each one to introduce themselves, and then we're going to talk about why each culture specifically resists talking about emotional issues, and then what we can do about it.
Before I introduce our first presenter, I want to let you know about an opportunity not just to listen to, but actually to engage with some of the counselors and pastors that you hear in this podcast and with others as well. We've created a new Facebook group. It's called Cross-Cultural Parenting, and it allows people like you to [00:02:00] come in and not just listen, but to ask questions and to dialogue with mature Christian leaders who are Latino, Asian African and Slavic. So again, just go to Facebook and look up Cross-Cultural Parenting. The link to join the group is right there. We would love to have you join us.
So first of all, I would like you to meet Ajab Amin.
Ajab Amin: So I am Ajab Amin. I am originally from Cameroon where I grew up. Until about 16, then I moved to Senegal for two years and then I moved to the U. S. So I've been in the U. S. since I was 18, although I was born in Pennsylvania, I always need to start there. I was born in State College, Pennsylvania, and so I my parents took me back to Cameroon when I was about three years old. And so I grew up there. I returned as an 18 year old and have been here ever since. I am currently a [00:03:00] psychologist so I practice doing individual and couples counseling. Also do workshops in churches and communities, and I also do Christian counseling.
John Yoder: Next up, I would like you to meet Dasha Cochran.
Dasha Cochran: My name is Dasha Cochran. Bushkina was my maiden name, my Russian name. I'm 43 years old. I'm a licensed clinical professional counselor in the state of California, I have lived in the United States since 2004, so I came after college.
I grew up in a city about a million people on the border with Ukraine. Went to school at Moscow State University in Moscow. And all of my family still lives in Russia. I married to an American man who lived in Russia for a little bit. So he does speak Russian. So my children are American, and I have three of them ages 16, 13, and 11.
John Yoder: Last up. I would like you to [00:04:00] meet a Malaysian Chinese by the name of Christine Chow.
Christine Chow: my name is Christine, and I'm originally from Malaysia. I am in my empty nest stage in life. I have a son. He's in New York. He's grown and flown. He's about to get married this September. I can't believe that. My husband and I, we serve at a church plant called New City of Nations. It's a multiethnic church. It's a small multiethnic church in the Twin Cities. And my husband's originally from Hong Kong. But we've both been here in the United States for many years, and I work as a counselor at Cedar Cove.
John Yoder: I asked each one of these counselors, Why is it that people from your particular ethnic background are often hesitant to discuss emotional issues? First of all, let's listen in to what Ajab has to say.
Ajab Amin: I think just with a lot of African [00:05:00] communities, we really grew up not talking so much about emotions and about the emotional sides of our lives. There's a lot of focus more on survival. And so I think our parents, grandparents, focused a lot more on, am I providing for you physically? And do you have a roof on your head? Do you have food? Are you going to school or, can you make something of yourself? And so there was less. of the talk of just your emotional and your mental life.
John Yoder: Christine shares with us how Asians often find discussing emotional issues shameful and a sign of weakness.
Christine Chow: At large, there's a deeper, maybe weightier shame factor. If you're struggling especially mentally, it's viewed as maybe a personal weakness, and so there's a lot more shame and a lot more [00:06:00] judgment that could come at you.
And so that also prevents people from sharing openly, especially about their mental health struggles. There's just this view in Asia, we prize being excellent in everything we do. And so with that, the flip side of that is, if you're not excellent, you're weak and it's impairing your functioning in daily life.
That's not good. So you need to just get back on track, just get over it. Because that's the most important thing. So it doesn't allow for space for people to be weak or to talk about their struggles, they have to hide it and project an image of, I'm okay.
They choose who they talk about emotions or problems with. Asia has a more generally communal culture. And relationships, friendships take on a family type of [00:07:00] wait to it. And so they might feel more comfortable sharing with friends, for example who are very close to them. Anyway, generally, I find that I do friendships in a similar way, you have a very close group of people, just a few friends that you would share a lot of your troubles with.
But then you might know a lot of other people. And so they're more comfortable sharing their problems, not with strangers, but with friends. Because to them they're being that communal minded, the relationship, it's very important for intimacy to happen, intimate sharing to happen. They feel more comfortable that way.
John Yoder: Dasha shares with us why it is that Russians are often hesitant to seek the services of a counselor. Before she does, let me speak into that from the pastoral perspective. Now, I love and work with all pastors, I respect all traditions, but there is a uniqueness among Russian [00:08:00] churches.
And that is, you can go to a Russian church in the U. S. with 200 people, even with 500 people, and in most cases, the pastors are unpaid. Because the belief from back home is, everybody has a secular job. We're a carpenter, a stonemason, and then we do ministry on the side. And when you come to America, even though we have more wealth, we still don't pay the pastor for their work. In conversation with Dasha, I realized that among not only Christian, but non-Christian Russians, there is a hesitance to even pay counselors for their work.
Dasha Cochran: So there's a Facebook group for Russian speaking women of the Bay Area, and it has 17, 000 members. That is the place for therapy. And what I mean by that, that people would rather put extremely personal content into that group than seek therapy. [00:09:00] And for example, what I find really peculiar is I'm not on it like all the time, but periodically I'll log on and see and there's always at least 1 post that is essentially a therapy question.
And there is a couple of us that are Russian speaking therapists and we would chime in and we say, Hey, this sounds like a therapy question, feel free to DM me, and very rarely people do that. And even when they do, they just expect you to give them an answer in that text conversation. And when you're like there are like, deeper issues to be explored and this and that they're like, Oh, no, my, I'm not interested.
We had a church group and really a friend's group that became a friend's group with, and it essentially was a therapy group. But I think there's a really strong aversion to pain for something like this. There is an expectation that it has to be free. But then it becomes unsustainable. The attitude is the [00:10:00] same across the board, religious or not. So I would say that the attitude is actually mostly cultural not religious.
Here's an interesting observation. My own parents, so I'm 43, my parents are in their early 70s, both highly educated people. My mom has a PhD. My dad has a master's. She was a university professor. Again, come from a extremely educated family. They have a hard time understanding what it is that I do, even though I several times explain to them what I do. And recently I was having a conversation with my father, and he's oh, you know, we were having some friends over who knew me when I was growing up, and we were talking about you. And you know, this person made this joke, and ha we laughed, that there must be a lot of crazy people in San Francisco because Dasha is so busy!
John Yoder: So you've just heard from people from African, [00:11:00] Asian, and Russian perspectives why it is that their own cultures are hesitant to talk about emotions. Two episodes ago, Pastor Moses Saldivar shared with us why it is that Latinos are equally hesitant to share. Let's remind ourselves of what he said.
Moses Saldivar: I think one of the things to keep in mind with Hispanic Latino cultures is that we are probably more honor-shame as far as our mentality and how we approach things. And so there can be a mindset that by engaging in counseling, there's something wrong with you, broke within you. And by having those types of conversations it feels shameful. And so we don't generally like to have those conversations.
John Yoder: So one of the biggest barriers to emotional health is that people of many cultures simply don't want to talk about emotions. Another [00:12:00] barrier is that many pastors believe that all needs of the people should be met by the church and that there is no need of anyone to seek spiritual help outside the church. Pastor Gisella is going to share with us how this plays out in the Latino community. But let me assure you that this problem is not unique to our Latino friends.
Gisella Arias: That's one of the things in the Latino community, at least. Asking sometimes members of the churches, they don't want to ask their pastor because they feel like their pastor is going to say, No, I am your spiritual leader. I am the one that is going to guide you.
We need to get together, we need to work for the common good, and the common good is the Body of Christ. Whatever is going to do good for my, for the members of my church, and they are going to get close to Christ, and Christ is growing in them, and I have to remove myself from the ego and understand [00:13:00] that God has already in our body, in the body of Christ, that can help my community, to fulfill and heal things that are deeper in their souls.
John Yoder: Dasha shares with us that in the Russian community, not only laypeople, but pastors as well, are often very hesitant to working with anyone who is a mental health professional.
Dasha Cochran: And unfortunately, it's actually not that different in the Christian community. And I feel like in the Christian community, it even has a more, almost like a sinister undertone in not needing counseling. It’s interpreted either like a lack of faith, or a lack of personal relationship with God or okay, maybe you'll talk to a pastor about stuff like that, but why would you go to somebody who was maybe trained in some secular methodologies?
John Yoder: [00:14:00] So now we've heard from various perspectives why it is that many people are hesitant to talk about their emotions. But let's ask the question, why does this matter? Now you may have come from a culture where people do not talk about this, but if your children were born in the US. And if they are going to our public schools, they are learning a lot of vocabulary about emotions and about sexuality. And they are spending a lot of time dialoguing about these things.
If they find that their church and their parents are not ready to discuss these things, and maybe don't even know the terms, they will believe that the things that are vitally important to them are irrelevant to the church. And this is a reason why the gospel of Jesus Christ is often seen as unattractive to the second generation, because the older generation will not deal with those issues. Let's hear what Ajab has to say about this.
Ajab Amin: Especially [00:15:00] with people like second generational immigrants in the US, with parents who grew up in African countries, they're in school and they're exposed to a lot of what you mentioned--sexuality, just the conversations around that. And they're also just exposed to a lot of talk about their mental lives, and so they learned that in school, but at home, it's not talked about.
And even the talk the sex talk, is that something that, I know my parents didn't have it with me. And a lot of my African friends would say that's not those are not conversations they had. And so to hear that in school and then to come home and not really even know how to have that conversation.
Sometimes they're also not allowed to have those conversations at home. It can just lead to some friction and just a loss of of even some kids feeling [00:16:00] understood or known by their parents because they feel like there's this part of their lives that they're not asked about or that their parents don't talk about. But yet they have all these thoughts and all these ideas that you're hearing from your friends, and they can't really talk about it with your parents.
John Yoder: So we see that many first generation who were born overseas and have come to the United States are hesitant to talk about these issues. But as I spoke with these different counselors, they were pretty much in agreement that American born second generation are much more likely to seek counseling. Here's what Ajab has to say.
Ajab Amin: I'll say right now there are a lot of second generation Africans, like people who either their parents we're born and raised in Africa, and then they were born here in the US or people who were born in Africa and then migrated here when they were [00:17:00] kids. I see a lot more of those seeking out counseling. I still don't find a lot of Africans who were like born and raised in Africa. And maybe migrated here as adults. I don't see a lot of them seeking out counseling.
John Yoder: Although Dasha is Russian, she lives in the Bay Area, which has a huge Asian population, and she actually sees more Asian clients than Russians. And she agrees that in both the Asian and the Russian world, second gen are far more likely to seek counseling than the first.
Dasha Cochran: Even with my Asian clients. I would say that the generational difference is actually maybe as significant as the immigrant difference in not, so again, the parents are more likely to send their children to therapy, like to fix a dog, then to participate in family counseling. [00:18:00]
John Yoder: So we know that among today's young people, there is an epidemic of anxiety and depression and other issues, and often churches are unaware of what to do about it. Now as I speak with church leaders, often in an immigrant community, some of the elders are aware that this is a problem and they want to do something about it. But other elders and leaders are very resistant and believe that this is something they are not comfortable discussing in church.
There is a difference between the foreign born and the American born in their readiness to open up and trust people they have never met. People who've grown up in Western countries will learn of somebody by a blog, a podcast, a book, a website, and even though they've never met, they understand the person's an authority, they speak well, and they're ready to trust them.
But for many people, It's all about relationship. And if we've not had tea, if [00:19:00] we've not had dinner, if we've not hugged, if we've not met each other, there is a slowness to meet and to trust that person. And there are ministry words we could use like incarnational and contextual. Some would say that we have to come into that small local church and incarnate Christ, or contextualize the message to them.
But there's a problem. In Minneapolis alone, there are more than 700 immigrant churches, and the average size is about 30. There is absolutely no way that we could bring into each one of these churches someone of the caliber of Ajib Amin, or Dasha Cochran, or Moses Saldivar. It simply can't happen. And if the requirement is incarnational, and the tea and the hug and the dinner, before change can happen, many churches will be left out.
So what is a workable solution? And [00:20:00] let me propose to you that it is gateway people.
And by gateway people, people who are typically bicultural and bilingual. The kind of people like you who listen to a podcast, or who join a Facebook group. The kind of people who will trust someone that they've never ever met before. You've also already earned the trust of those elders because you've drank the tea, you've had the dinner, you've had the hug, you've been with them in their service, they know you, and when you say, I know this resource over here, I've listened in, you can trust it, it's biblical. You become the gateway person that earns the trust and can bring a helpful resource to that church.
That's why we have created this podcast. That's why we're creating a new Facebook group, and that's why it is all free of charge. So that people who are gateway people, English speaking, can listen in, [00:21:00] understand that there are free resources available, and then let those first generation leaders know that they're available to them.
So if you know a gateway person, somebody that has earned the trust of a specific church or immigrant community, send them our way, have them subscribe to the podcast, join the Facebook group, understand the resources, and be able to share them with others.
In closing, there are three action steps that you can take.
First of all, point people to the podcast. It's www.immigrantministry.com/ccp.
Secondly, point people to the Facebook group. On Facebook, it's just called Cross-Cultural Parenting.
And thirdly, if you have anybody who struggles with understanding the accents of our presenters, or would rather read than hear, transcripts of this podcast are available, but only on our website. On Apple and Spotify, you can listen to the podcast, but you have to go to our website to get the transcript. Again, that's www.immigrantministry.com/ccp. And you can use those podcasts, you can use those transcripts, for lesson preparation, or for whatever you would like.
Next time we're going to focus on the issue of anxiety. So if you [00:23:00] want to hear how these practitioners of various cultural backgrounds help young people struggling with anxiety, tune in. I'll see you then.
