Four Different Stories of Racist Encounters with In-Person and Online Therapists

A complicated journey through navigating in-person and online therapists

I’ve written about my journey exploring online therapy (e.g., Talkspace, Betterhelp) as in-person therapy proved to not work. I’m a first-generation immigrant but have been living in Canada since I was a toddler, so effectively had an experience more similar with my second-generation immigrant peers.

It was wild to me that my in-person therapists kept referring me to “immigrant services” for help, even though I’d been in Canada for 2.5 decades and the local immigrant services provide support for new immigrants (~past 5 years).

It’s sad to say that even with online therapy and supposedly a broader set of options, my experience remained the same. I continued to encounter racism.

Particularly when already struggling with low mood and stress, it can be extra hard to deal with racism when someone is supposed to be there to support you rather than contribute to these struggles.

If you find similarities in my story, know that you’re not alone. Most importantly, you deserve better.

Therapist: “Your anxiety is because you’re mind-reading and jumping to conclusions about whether something is a racist encounter”

This is something that occurred across multiple therapists, so I wanted to place it first. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is the most common treatment for anxiety and depression, and it focuses on how your thoughts (cognitions) and actions (behaviour) influence your mood (Clark & Beck, 2010).

On the cognition end, something called the thought record (or diary, as a bullet journal fanatic like me would like to call it) is used quite often. In this journal, you record your mood, any immediate thoughts you have surrounded a specific event, and try to “reframe” the experience to a more realistic one.

The theory behind this is that the mind takes a lot of shortcuts to save time, which produces “irrational” thinking. By taking the time to rethink some of these thoughts and make sure we’re more realistically understanding the world around us, our mood will improve.

Example of when this works wonderfully (in my opinion): If I was feeling particularly anxious because I was having thoughts like “Oh my goodness, if I don’t immediately respond to an audience question at a conference and need time to think about it, everyone will think I’m an imposter and I’ll never make it in academia.”

This ticks off multiple of the common “cognitive distortions” (Gilbert, 1998):

• Jumping to conclusions: I haven’t even tripped up at the conference yet and I’m assuming I’ll do terribly. It’s there because I’m trying to plan ahead and make sure I don’t make any mistakes; my anxiety usually tries to make sure I’m prepared for any and all situations.
• Mind-reading: I’m making an immediate assumption of what the audience will think (that I’m an imposter), which may be wrong. It’s there because making educated assumptions is a key part of social interactions; sometimes I “zoom into” the most negative possibility out of all of the possibilities.
• Catastrophizing: With something as small as mispronouncing a word, I think I’ll never make it in academia, which is a conclusion very removed from the supposed mistake. Similar to jumping to conclusions in trying to prepare me for the absolute worst scenario.

This is where a thought record to rejig these shortcuts to make sure they’re realistic:

• Jumping to conclusions & catastrophizing: Realistically, although it could happen, in most presentations I do not make these kinds of mistakes, especially if I’ve rehearsed them. Even if I do make a mistake, most people won’t remember it in a few years.
• Mind-reading: Most of the time the audience at a conference is truthfully too checked out to actually notice any mistakes. Even if they do and even if they remember it, it’s not something that impacts my actual realistic career in academia.

The problem with this is when thought records are used in to “reframe” racist encounters.

Imagine going to a restaurant and getting really poor service, while observing that everyone else got fantastic service. If this happened once, I can see the reasoning for not “jumping to conclusions” that the poor service is directed at you or “mind-reading” because damn, waiters can just as likely be tired beyond belief and just not have the energy to be on tip-top service. I can relate to that. (Side rant about tipping being the bulk of a waiter’s wage? Maybe someday, I’m passionate about that too).

But imagine going to a restaurant lauded for great service but repeatedly getting poor service unless you visit with white friends. Here, given the repeated encounters (replication!) and difference in service in the context of being accompanied by someone else (pseudo-manipulating an independent variable), it’s a different story. Given this additional info, “reframing” that it’s just bad luck and the waiter’s bad day isn’t going to prevent the fact that every time I go there with other BIPOC friends, we get the cold shoulder or grumpy service.

It reinforces that microaggressions “aren’t real” and are a result of BIPOC perceptions that can be changed, instead of addressing systematic and targeted behaviour by those around us.

Reframing these microaggressions differently also doesn’t wash them away. We continue to face them repeatedly, which weighs on mental health regardless of whether I try to think differently.

Telling clients that their encounters with racism are personal perceptions that should be “reframed” imposes this belief that dealing with racism is the norm and there is no other way of living. It imposes the belief that the individual is at fault (it’s your thoughts that are wrong!).

Therapy over the phone: “Oh! Your English is so good I’d never have guessed you were Chinese!”

I have Asian friends who have lived for generations in Canada and still receive this comment. Even for me, as a first-generation immigrant, being fluent in English is not a surprise — Hong Kong was colonized by the British. English is just as much my mother tongue as Cantonese.

So when I was cut off from describing why I was stressed by dealing with rising anti-Asian hate (Liu, 2021) with such a simplistic comment of “wow I didn’t know you were Chinese! You speak English so well!”, I knew I couldn’t go on. (Not to mention that being Asian does not naturally equate to being Chinese??)

How do I begin describing that when I write about the human rights abuses in Hong Kong (HRW, 2020) and Xinjiang (Wang, 2020), sometimes there is support, but sometimes I’m told that I don’t “fit culturally with my ancestors” or “know my roots” or that I’m fueling anti-Asian hate? But that I stayed silent about these reactions because I was scared of people who would make sweeping generalizations in either direction without understanding the nuance?

Or when I discuss racism, sometimes I get support, but sometimes I’m also told that “well, at least you’re not encountering human rights abuses” or that “you’re lucky to be relatively safe so you should be grateful”? These are reactions that I don’t normally share because I’m scared people will take one sentence out of context and use it to fuel some argument I absolutely do not agree with.

The complexity of this encounter shows how much of a therapist’s cultural competency is on whether someone “is” or “isn’t” part of a certain culture, rather than the nuanced gradient of experiences that make up an individual clients’ social location.

The all-or-nothing of “if Chinese, then English bad; if not Chinese, English good” is so ridiculously rudimentary that it makes it hard for me to explain the nuances of being Asian-Canadian and holding a constellation of beliefs; some of which will align with my Asian-Canadian (or AAPI) peers, and others that will drastically vary.

Therapist: “You’re self-victimizing. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but until you’re ready to accept that, you’re not ready to heal in therapy.”

This was particularly hurtful because it came from someone who I thought was an ally. At the outset, she was clear with identifying her social location and that she had worked successfully with a few other BIPOC clients. This gave me encouragement.

In the end, this also created the most damage. This is because rather than noticing the signs at the beginning that there wasn’t a good fit, I came to trust and learn from her. With this foundation and trust comes this ensuing self-doubt on whether I truly was self-victimizing.

It’s harder to dismiss this thought that none of this racism is real and it’s only happening as a result of what I am CHOOSING to see, from someone who genuinely provided useful tools in other scenarios. There are still breathing exercises that I use from her because she was able to present them in a way that worked for me.

Which made it really surprising that when I finally felt comfortable enough to share about racist encounters, that she said all of this. Because we had a better relationship, instead of just giving up (because it’s an immense amount of energy to try and “correct” someone meant to help you or to share your perception), I shared what I thought.

She jumped immediately to label me as self-victimizing and to tell me that I wasn’t ready for more therapy. There were no acceptable alternative interpretations in her mind, and it didn’t matter what I shared with her to explain why I believed those encounters were racist. She held the one “truth” and if I didn’t align with her one truth, I was deemed not ready for therapy.

This was a shock because when I gave her contrasting information about whether “meditation” worked for me (as someone distractible), she was patient in exploring options until we found the right one. A lot of other previous therapists were just adamant that I needed to “try harder”.

This one left a dent in me. When someone is flexible enough to understand your perspective on one thing but not another (“can’t meditate if I’m so distractible”), when they’re not willing to hear out your beliefs in another situation, you start questioning whether your beliefs are truly irrational or self-victimizing.

I held on to it, and it wounded me. I blamed myself for the racist encounter, and for ending therapy with this therapist, believing that I shouldered the shame of “not being good enough” or “ready enough” for my own healing. All because I finally felt comfortable enough to share about this racist encounter.

Once again, this view enforces the idea that you are personally responsible for your perception of a racist encounter rather than holding accountable the system that perpetuates that these racist encounters. It places the responsibility of change on someone who encounters racism rather than the system that perpetuates it.

Therapist: “Your description of your parents is codependent and toxic. Leave them now.”

The problem I want to highlight here is how often filial piety or any community-based values are immediately labelled as “toxic” in Westernized therapy that centers on individualism.

For starters, filial piety is a Confucian concept that guides how children should treat their parents (Yeh & Bedford, 2003). It often includes concepts of taking care of your elderly parents as reciprocation for their kindness in taking care of you when you were younger. It’s a part of a community-based set of relationships that is less common in individualized Western society where once you’re 18, you fly off into your own lands.

Codependency describes being reliant on others to provide approval regarding safety, self-worth and identity (Hogg & Frank, 1992). In an individualistic world, the expectation that others will fill your needs is unwanted, even in the slightest bit. It’s seen as unhealthy because the cultural assumption is to be responsible for managing your own emotions and fixing your own problems.

To automatically label filial piety as codependency is problematic because the “base assumption” about relationships is different. If the base assumption is that as an adult, you take care of yourself, and you rely heavily on others for support, this feels burdening and is usually unwelcome by others. A parent in this culture expecting an adult child to visit every weekend may be seen as unwelcome because the societal norm may be to have fewer connections, only at larger holidays.

In cultures that believe in filial piety, the base assumption is different. In addition to parents having the responsibility to care for their children, the children have a reciprocal expectation to care for their parents when they are older. Elderly parents who have expectations that others in their family will take care of them when they most need support are seen as relying on others for support. A parent in this culture expecting an adult child to visit every weekend may very well be within the typical expectations of types of relationships within this culture, particularly since previous generations typically lived with their parents post-marriage.

Thus, adult children who hold this view within the norms of their own culture on wanting to take care of their parents are labelled by white therapists as codependent but are actually living in alignment with their own cultural beliefs.

This is what Jenn Im, popular beauty Youtuber said about her experiences seeking therapy:

As an Asian American, I feel like I owe my parents everything. I feel this weight of needing to take care of them. I was telling her [my therapist] the stresses of supporting my family and she basically looked me and told me that I needed to cut ties with my parents, and that “you do not owe your parents anything, they are not your responsibility”.

Jenn Im in her video SPILLING THE TEA ON ALL MY THERAPISTS

This automatic labelling of Asian cultural values as codependent or toxic leaves scars on folks already trying to navigate the intricacies of living within two or more different cultures.

How each person interprets filial piety depending on their own cultural identity (and how much it is influenced by their parents’ influence vs. the influence of where they grew up) will be different.

Filial piety alone is not toxic, and labelling it at the outset adds to this burdening narrative that white culture and white narratives are more important than our own ancestral beliefs. This is the therapy version throwing away or skipping lunches because it “smelled” and wasn’t Lunchables like what all the other kids eat. It reinforces that there is one “right answer” to living (whether lunch options or parental relationships).

Relationships being stripped away because they align with your own cultural values rather than Western ones is so damaging. It imposes that there is only one “right” way to have relationships and that any other way of being is “not correct”.

Summary

Experiencing these microaggressions has all felt like a sour taste in my mouth. It signalled me towards rethinking fit when overwhelmingly, all of these scenarios reaffirm a certain set of beliefs that aren’t true.

There’s the constant placing responsibility, shame and burden of experiencing racism on BIPOC as personal issues (e.g., cognitive distortions or self-victimizing/ resistance to therapy), affirming this narrative that racist people and racist behaviour are the norms and we just have to “learn how to deal with it” to not be hurt by it.

There’s the all-or-nothing view of what it means to be BIPOC, with even positive-meaning phrases like “you’re so good at English” holding an insidious deeper ignorance of ignoring that BIPOC are all the same in this on-switch, off-switch manner. This view ignores that within diversity there are different opinions, different relationships with our culture and history.

It perpetuates this idea that Western cultures are “correct” and other cultures that have other beliefs are “codependent” or “toxic”, even going the length to encourage breaking off relationships that preserve these traditional values. Imagine living with the damage of losing relationships as a result of someone imposing their cultural beliefs on you, and have that be written off as adequate healthcare.

We need to do better. Therapists are providing healthcare for individuals who are already dealing with significant stress and burden, and not having adequate training to support BIPOC clients actively perpetuates harm at a time where it’s hardest for them to already manage what’s going on.

Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她) writes about food, culture, books — and a lot of poetry.

References

Clark, D. A., & Beck, A. T. (2010). Cognitive theory and therapy of anxiety and depression: Convergence with neurobiological findings. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(9), 418–424. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2010.06.007

Liu, S. (2021, March 17). Reports of Anti-Asian hate crimes are surging in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic | CTV News. CTV News. https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/reports-of-anti-asian-hate-crimes-are-surging-in-canada-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-1.5351481

Hogg, J. A., & Frank, M. L. (1992). Toward an Interpersonal Model of Codependence and Contradependence. Journal of Counseling & Development, 70(3), 371–375. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6676.1992.tb01618.x

HRW. (2020, June 9). Hong Kong: Rights Under Attack on Anniversary. Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/06/09/hong-kong-rights-under-attack-anniversary

Gilbert, P. (1998). The evolved basis and adaptive functions of cognitive distortions. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 71(4), 447–463. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8341.1998.tb01002.x

Wang, M. (2020, February 20). More Evidence of China’s Horrific Abuses in Xinjiang. Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/02/20/more-evidence-chinas-horrific-abuses-xinjiang

Yeh, K.-H., & Bedford, O. (2003). A test of the Dual Filial Piety model. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 6(3), 215–228. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1467-839X.2003.00122.x