CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Setting Boundaries Within Immigrant Families with Sahaj Kaur Kohli

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

This week on the Calling Home Podcast, Whitney will talk with therapist and author Sahaj Kaur Kohli. They’ll discuss the challenges of setting boundaries and maintaining healthy communication within multi-generational immigrant families. She highlights the pressure that immigrant parents often feel from their own parents, which can lead to rigid expectations and norms being passed down to their children. They will also talk about the importance of partners being on the same page when dealing with in-law dynamics and the need for individuals to manage their expectations of their parents.  Fore more information on Sahaj Kaur Kohli and her book, "But What Will People Say?", visit sahajkaurkohli.com.  Follow Sahaj on Instagram @sahajkohli  Have a question for Whitney? Call Home at 866-225-5466.  Click here to get “Toxic Positivity” on paperback.  Join Whitney’s Family Cycle Breakers Club for further support and discussion on family dynamics at CallingHome.co. Follow the Calling Home community on Instagram or TikTok.  Follow Whitney Goodman on Instagram or TikTok.  The Calling Home podcast is not engaged in providing therapy services, mental health advice or other medical advice or services, is not a substitute for advice from a qualified healthcare provider, and does not create any therapist-patient or other treatment relationship between you and Calling Home or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Home’s Terms of Service. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Ah, sent a text to the group that definitely wasn't for everyone. You're good. Enjoy some goldfish cheddar crackers. Goldfish have short memories. Be like goldfish. My guest today is to hedge Coley, a therapist and author of her newly released book, but what will people say? She's here to talk with me about setting.

boundaries and healthy communication within multi-generational immigrant families. I'm Whitney Goodman. Welcome to the Calling Home podcast. I'm glad you're here. So in just about every culture, there are different expectations for members of the family that are often passed down from the preceding generation. This can range from gender roles to parenting style and can be very rigid even as an adult child forms their own family. So Hed is here to not only share her thoughts on this as a therapist, but also as a person who has firsthand experience in this area with her immigrant parents. It can be really difficult for anyone in a situation like this because on one hand, it's important for adult children to have empathy

for any members of their family who didn't have the same opportunities or freedoms growing up. But there's also the need for grandparents or parents to realize that the world they grew up in is very different from the world we're in now, and there has to be a willingness to communicate or change, regardless of the culture. So with that, let's get into it. This month, you know, inside Calling Home, we're talking about grandparent relationships. And I would love to know how you see multi-generational dynamics or dynamics with grandparents impacting the people that you work with. Yeah.

So I think the research even suggests that people who come from specifically Asian descent, but not just Asians, but I think that's the research I've read. live in multi-generational households. So it's really common for immigrants, especially to like move to this country and maybe bring their parents with them. And then they have kids here and then everyone's living under one roof. And generationally, what I see is that oftentimes the pressure that the immigrant parents feel comes from their parents. And that is then trickling down into the way that they're parenting their kids, those of us who are now being born and socialized in a new culture. And oftentimes that is like a fear of cultural erasure. Uh,

wanting their kids to be successful so they can prove to their parents that they're parenting their kids well, right? So that comes out in like sometimes archaic, you know, norms around gender, around career, around marriage, around dating, around, you know, the skills a woman or a son or a daughter should have in the household. And it really impacts the kids because they're left feeling like the metric for what is being a successful grandkid is not necessarily what will make them happy. And I know that's something that I often felt, which is I'm an Indian woman, I'm an Indian daughter, and I can't cook. And that in an Indian household is like wildly unsuccessful and wildly unheard of that I'm just not,

I married someone who actually cooks for me. And that's amazing. But I think a part of that for me was resisting that my mom taught me as a woman, my place was in the household. And I know that that's because of what she was taught by my grandparents. And so I think that there's those like kind of traditional gender roles that are passed down a lot that I see all the time in my work. And a lot of times it's because of the grandparents. It's because it's the way our parents were parented by their parents. It's so true. You know, I think as I hear you talking, it's like it's so nuanced because there are these really positive influences that come from

looking at multiple generations and having them influence your life. You know, I sometimes share this about my personal background that my mom is a first generation American. Her parents are immigrants and it was very normal in my family for still is for my grandparents live with my cousin and we always kind of had these types of dynamics where people were taking care of one another it was expected but those relationships were very healthy and they were positive relationships and a lot of what I find with the people that I work with is of course they're coming to these resources because the relationships are often not healthy right and there's this expectation of like well, you should care for everyone and you should have them live with you no matter what. And that's what I find to be so hard to navigate. I'm wondering if you can speak to that pressure and how you see it manifest. Yeah. I mean, in a lot of cultures that are collectivists, so a lot of immigrant household are, they have these values of filial piety, which is like kind of this obedience and duty that kids have towards their parents or familalism and where families should take priority over the individual.

And in one environment, you know, the individualistic environment that we're socialized and we're taught to take care of ourselves, sometimes at the expense of other people. And then in the collectivist environment, we're taught to take care of other people, sometimes at the expense of ourselves. And it's, where does that leave us? Because what I see is guilt all the time. All my clients feel guilt all the time. I'm doing too much.

I'm not doing enough. I'm not too American. I'm too American. I'm not Indian enough. You know, I'm selfish. I want to do things for myself. I don't care about my parents because we're taught these narratives that we're supposed to be self-sacrificial that we're supposed to always think about our parents. And the narrative kind of

runs through for immigrants where whether or not it's been explicitly imposed on us, we feel like, oh, our parents made these sacrifices. Our parents had worse. You know, my own grandparents, both sets of my grandparents, are refugees. And they're no longer alive, but often my parents then developed this mindset of stoicism, of powering through, of, you know, our parents had it worse. I shouldn't complain. My parents did the best they can. And those narratives are then passed down to me to feel like, well, I can't question my parents because, you know, they were taught this or they immigrated or they lived in three countries by the time they were my age. And it can just, it causes so much disconnection because, and it's so ironic because in

collectivist communities, you know, we're supposed to protect one another. We're supposed to care for one another. We're supposed to like give to one another. And yet so many of us are struggling in isolation and alone because it's because of these values of filial piety of saving face where we feel like we can't even speak up and say, hey, this doesn't feel good to me. Hey, this is hurting me. Hey, I still love you, but this is what I might need from you. And we're not taught to have these conversations. If you think about communication and, you know, high context cultures versus low context cultures, a lot of collectivist households are high context. And what that means, and there's, you know, these anecdotes of immigrant parents not saying, I love you, they'll cut you

fruit because it's contextual. They show their love in context of the relationship versus verbally. And so if we grow up in that kind of environment where we're taught to communicate that way, then it's hard for us to even emotionally communicate our feelings because we're not taught. What is happiness? What is sadness? What is depression? What is anxiety? And I see these narratives run through all the time for my clients. Most of my clients are first time therapy goers. And a lot of our work starts with destigmatizing therapy and making room for them to say, oh, I'm allowed to talk about my parents. I'm allowed to talk about my grandparents. It doesn't make me a bad kid. And I often have to normalize that for them and say, hey, you're rationalizing

again. You're justifying what you're just, you're like trying to justify what your parents did, but we can, both of these things can be true. They can do their best. They can love you. And it could have been really hard for you and harmful to you. And it's like a lot of our work is just making space for that validation, that all of that can be true at the same time. Yeah, what you're saying is so accurate and something I've experienced to that it almost feels like, you know, you're abandoning your family, you're being cruel to them, if you say anything about how they are impacting you. But the reality is, is that despite, you know, the sacrifices that were made by our parents or our grandparents, like, we are living in an entirely different

world than they are. And so we're going to deal with different challenges. And it's almost like, you know, to weave in the toxic positivity angle. Like, I feel like that's very prevalent among these groups of like, they had it so much harder than me, like you said. So I cannot complain. I cannot be upset about this. A hundred percent. I actually call it thrivers guilt, this like guilt that we feel for being able to thrive and have access to these opportunities and resources. And it causes, you know, it causes us to like succumb to toxic positivity that we always have to be positive or in a lot of immigrant families that are religious, it becomes like religion and God being weaponized against us. You should just pray to God. We can outsource our like healing to

this, you know, thing that we all believe in when in reality, that's not how relationships exist or are sustained. And I've had to have those conversations with my own immigrant parents where when I went through something traumatic in my 20s, I was living at home and they were like, just pray more. Just go to temple. You know, I'm, God will take care of you. And I'm like, yes, that's true. And I actually need professional support. I'm struggling. And we had to have these really. hard conversations where they felt like they failed me because I was struggling. Because of the sacrifices they made, they were like, I've done everything to set you up for success. You shouldn't be struggling now. And they couldn't wrap their head around the fact that they can't control

everything no matter how hard they try. And we've had to have, you know, these conversations have evolved now into now that I'm married, what does it look like for me to be a daughter to them? Or what does it look like for me to speak up for my needs? My mom will often tell me, you know, if I'm talking to her like this in this tone. And I'm saying, hey, I actually really don't appreciate that. She'll be like, you're so scary. And I'm like, I'm not scary. I'm just actually advocating for myself. And I have to have a lot of compassion because I'm like, wow, you got married at 18 and you were never taught to advocate for yourself. And I have to remember the generational differences we have, the cultural differences we have where I actually am allowed to advocate for myself. I know how to. I've

learned how to. And sometimes I wonder, you know, we've had frank conversations where I think she's jealous that I'm able to do that because she was never taught how to do that. And I don't know if I could ever say that to her face because I think she'll be like, no, no, no, my life is great, you know, toxic positivity. But all of these things, again, can be true at the same time. Yeah, that like gendered difference generationally is something I'm seeing come up so much lately of, you know, especially mothers, mother-in-law's being really shocked by their daughter-in-law's behavior of like, I cannot believe that she wouldn't sacrifice all of this

stuff because that's what we did. And that's what you're supposed to do. And it is offensive to them. And I understand because I think about sometimes, like, what would it have been like to grow up in that world and not be able to do the things that I'm doing right now? I would have gone insane, you know, to not be able to have this voice and to have to suppress so much. And so I do think, jealousy is is the right word for it a lot of the time, even if we don't want to admit that discomfort of being jealous of your own child or of your daughter-in-law, whoever it is. It's uncomfortable. Oh, I totally agree. The daughter-in-law, mother-in-law dynamic, I think an immigrant households, but especially in South Asian households, is so delicate. I mean, think about the pop

culture and media. My mom grew up, I grew up with her watching these like soaps, these Indian in soaps where all the drama was around the daughter-in-law and the mother-in-law. And we have all of these relationships, you know, all of these narratives around the relationship with a son and his mom and how the mom should be the first woman in a son's life. And then the wife is like the second, second to the mom. And if you think about that, I mean, of course we're all like trying to navigate these kind of archaic norms and narratives around our relationships and then struggling to set boundaries and maintain these relationships when in reality they're not all that healthy

to us. And I write about this in my book, right? What does it mean for something to be normal? Oftentimes my own mom will be like, it's a cultural difference. You're just so American. And I'm like, but where does this norm come from? You know, just because we've accepted it doesn't mean it's okay. Just because you accepted it doesn't mean it's okay. I doesn't mean I should have to accept it. Like we all, we have to interrogate what that means. Where are these norms coming from? And who in reality are they serving? And oftentimes it's the dads. It's the men. It's the people in power. And so gender is such a big.

source of conflict in immigrant families because of the patriarchal norms, because of the, you know, vertical social hierarchy that we see where it's all delineated based off of birth order, gender, age. If you're the eldest, if you are a boy, like that you are reserved more privilege when it comes to anger, when it comes to speaking up, when it comes to making decisions. And that plays a role and that will impact all of us. But yeah, the mother-in-law, daughter-in-law dynamic is something I hear and see a lot. Yeah, it definitely seems like it's coming to such a head at this point in time as women become more equal players in the relationships with their spouses. And also that I think in heterosexual couples, men now among my generation are like really wanting to be on equal

footing with their partners a lot more of the time and they're prioritizing their partners in different ways where that was not the case before. Like you're saying there was this expectation that like I will come first with my son. My son will prioritize me. And if he doesn't, it must be because his wife is interfering and making sure that he doesn't. It couldn't be like my sweet boy that is doing this to me. Oh my gosh. Exactly. I mean, I'm nodding my head feverish like because I see this all the time. Even in my work as an intercultural, therapist, it comes up all the time. The gender dynamics are wild to me. And, you know, it's so interesting because if you think about, you know, my own mom got married at 18, had my brother,

who's the first born at 20, and my dad was working and trying to support and they lived in, they moved and lived in three different countries together. Like, it makes sense that my mom feels so close to my son. But it also, you know, if I'm being honest, has impacted their relationship and what she expects and what she needs from him. And it's almost what I see in a lot of Indian households specifically is that the son becomes kind of like a pseudo husband role, like steps into this role of like, okay, well, I'm not getting my needs met. It's a weird parentification that's not just emotional.

It's almost it's just, it's a very interesting dynamic that I see happen. Yeah. I just recorded a solo episode that's coming out in June. That's basically about like what's up with the boy moms. And I'm a mother of sons. And I see some of this stuff. And I'm like, oh my gosh, this does not resonate with me. Like, I cannot imagine seeing my son in that way.

But one of the biggest contributors that was voiced like by people that I pulled and also literature that I read was exactly what you're saying. When the husband or the partner or the co-parent is not present, is emotionally distant, is a way for work, that is when this dynamic becomes most like pronounced and intensifies because the woman's next best thing. is to look to her son, especially with these generational differences that you're referring to of, like, I need to be attached to a man to feel safe, to be protected, to have worth. So the next closest thing, I can't, I'm not going to step out on my partner, so I'll just go to my son. Exactly. And then those men get married to sometimes women, and then it just, yeah, it's a whole thing. Yeah, absolutely.

So, you know, I want to talk about, like, what role you think grandparents should play in families and, like, what is a good level of involvement for grandparents and how should, especially, I think, intercultural couples navigate that because we all have different definitions of what is the right level of involvement. Yeah, it's such a good question. It's something I get a lot in my column, actually, at the Washington Post is like, I'm a daughter-in-law and my mother-in-law expects X, Y, and Z. Like, how do I talk about this? Or even in-law dynamics in general. And my first piece of advice is always the partners should have a frank conversation. I think what happens a lot, especially in couples where maybe that's their first time doing any kind of self-reflection work, is that they get married and they, and this is okay. It's okay for them to expect that their spouse become a part of their, like, family of origin. But what happens that I think is a little bit more harmful is that then they turn to their family of origin for all of the advice or what their needs are before they talk to their spouse about how they're going to show up. So I feel like if you're going to choose a partner, then you and your partner should always be on the same page.

If you're having problems with your partner's family, you should be able to talk to your partner about that. Your partner should be able to be the mediator between their family of origin and you. Those are really painful, hard conversations that might happen, but they're necessary. It shouldn't be you dealing with your in-laws alone or you dealing with, you know, how to raise your kids alone. It should be you and your partner if you are partnered up. And I think what I see a lot is that there are generational differences in how we're supposed to parent. And that's the biggest source of contention is that our parents, our parents who become grandparents, think that we're supposed to raise our kids the way that they raised us. And we'll often say, and I know I've seen this in your work, but they will often say, like, you turned out fine.

I turned out fine. We all turned out fine. And it's like, fine is fine, but fine is not necessarily the metric we're using anymore, right? We're using good. We're using healthy. We're using successful in a different way. It doesn't just mean monetary success anymore. It means like being able to have open communication and trust, you know, love in different ways. And so I think it's really interesting because, you know, I'm not a parent myself, but I have five nephews and nieces from my brother and my sister who are parents and I've been watching them parent. and navigate these hard conversations with our parents. And I think what I often tell people who come to me with these questions is,

how can you involve your grandparents as, like, in a more fun role? Instead of them feeling like they're supposed to be active in helping you parent, how can they actually enjoy being a grandparent, which is more fun and ease and showing up and playing with the kid? And how can we use that as a way to kind of reparent them and, you know, rewire what their role is rather than them thinking, oh, I'm supposed to be another parent who disciplines who like has a say in the way things are done. And often it's a lot of give to get.

So when I get this question where, you know, sometimes people will be like, I don't know how to have my parents involved when they don't, you know, they don't agree with the way I'm parenting. And often I'm like, what are your non-negotiables? Maybe it's the food you're feeding. Maybe it's the bedtime routine. So figure out what your non-negotiables are, have boundaries around those. And what are some other things that you're willing to just kind of be more flexible on when your parents come to visit?

or around. And that might be, you know, having that nighttime snack or watching TV or whatever. And how can you make your, how can you make your parents feel useful? Oftentimes, my dad just said this today, actually. He's like, my kids don't need me anymore. And that sounds really sad. But for him, what he means is I spent my whole life working, financially providing, being like that financial provider of the family. Now all my kids are independent. So what am I here for? And I was like, just because you're not financially needed doesn't mean you're not emotionally needed. So how can we have our parents feel useful and involved when we're raising our own kids? And that can look like giving them something to do to help them feel useful that you're willing to kind of give up.

You know, sometimes it says, hey, mom, don't worry about feeding my kid because you're like, I don't trust my mom to feed my kid properly. But hey, can you help with the laundry? Or maybe you can help put, you know, put the baby to sleep. Helping them feel useful, asking them questions. When we think about the one down approach, when we're dealing with dominating people, we want to give them, we want to help them feel like they are a part of. it in ways that they feel included with us knowing that maybe we're just giving them that thing. And it sounds like it's not a healthy thing, but it works so well in immigrant families to be able to say with your partner, okay, I'm going to let my mom do this. Are you okay with

that? Your mom comes to visit and you say, hey, mom, is it okay if you do this? She feels automatically like, oh my gosh, my kid is asking me to be useful and asking me to be a part of this. So finding ways, you know, that you can incorporate them that feel good to you while staying on the same page with your partner and understanding what your non-negotiables are. Yeah, I love that advice because I think it's, it gives you an opportunity to be direct and like directive at the same time and to really like empower you in that situation because I also find that grandparents sometimes tend to fall on these two extremes. You have some that are very passive and they want you to tell them what to do or they're going to do nothing and then

feel not included, or you have the overbearing ones that are like, it's my way or the highway, you know, and this depends on their personality and all of that. But having these conversations and also, you know, framing it in a positive way of like, I love when you do this. It's very helpful if you do that. You're so good at this with the kids can be very empowering. And I know for some adults, they're like, I don't want a parent my parent like that. But Bank more oncours when you switch to a Scotia Bank banking package. Learn more at scotiabank.com slash banking packages. Conditions apply.

Scotia Bank, you're richer than you think. It is like what you're saying. Like sometimes you have to get into that role of like, how can I tee them up? Yeah, you do. Because if you think about culture, I mean, my own parents, I've had more access to my parents than they had to their own parents because they immigrated and left. So they don't even know how to have a relationship with their kids as adults because they didn't have a relationship with their own parents as adults. They left and then it was like they did everything themselves and I often have to tell my parents that. I'm like, this is new for you.

Like you didn't have access to your parents. This is totally new for all of us, but it doesn't have to be bad or feel bad. Let's just all figure it out together. And so, you know, when I think about it in that way, I'm able to have more compassion for them and say, you have no idea what you're doing because you weren't modeled this. You didn't do this yourself. You never had access to your parents as adults. Both of my, you know, my dad has outlived my grandfathers in age. And so for him, too, it's like, he's like, oh, now I'm like older than my own dads were

and I don't know how to be a part. And I live closer to my grandkids. I live closer to my kids. So how do I even have this relationship? And I'm like rewiring it for him to say, you're not just useful by having a career. You get to now retire and enjoy life and come travel with us. do things, and that feels so, like, countercultural for him because ease is just not something he's used to. Right. You know, it's making me think about also, like, the amount of contact and access

we can have. I know we talk a lot about, like, young people and cell phones, but I do think this amount of access through social media, FaceTime, the phones, has also really changed grandparent relationships in a lot of ways that I know I have to get my expectations in check even about like how much people should be checking in, having contact all this with my children. And you see that a lot from the grandparents as well that that's not something I experienced with my grandparents. It's like I went to their house to see them or they could call me on the phone, but we certainly weren't texting. No. Yeah. And now like my children have this full unmitigated access, you know, to their grandparents. And same with the grandparents.

to the children, that that's a whole new thing to learn. It totally is. Yeah, it totally is. And I think social media and, you know, how much access we get is such an interesting dilemma because I think for a lot of people I work with, you know, who come from collectivist backgrounds, availability or accessibility always means you should be available. When that's not, you know, just because you have the time doesn't mean that time should be spent for your parents or, you know, it's almost like the work I do with, my clients who are parents is helping them also protect that time for themselves as parents.

The grandparents don't always have to be a part of it. And it's almost like we are learning for the first time how to take care of ourselves and our families while also figuring out how the grandparents play a role in that. And it's a new thing. And I think just having compassion for ourselves as we navigate this is key. Like there's no, I get asked all of these questions all the time. And I'm like, there's no one solution, miracle answer I can give you. It really is dependent on your relationship with your parents, what the issue is, what you're willing to tolerate, what you think is unhealthy, what feels dysfunctional to you, what, you know, you and your partner are okay with. All of these things are different for every single person you'll talk to.

Yeah, it's such a common issue across cultures, across every group of people that I hear about of like, well, now my parents can see what we're doing with our children. So if you put anything, even in like a shared iPhone album or on social media or you send a picture. It's like, oh, they know that I'm with my in-laws or they know that I took the kids to this place. And so people can kind of create these narratives, right, of like, why weren't we included? Yeah. Why are they spending more time with them versus us?

Yeah. Yeah. It's really tricky. I find that it plays out the same as like, you know, middle schoolers, like seeing what their friends are doing online and feeling left out. and it's really complicated. I mean, that's a really good analogy because if you think about the emotional age

of our parents, for some of us, many of us in immigrant households, but for many of us in general, they don't have the emotional maturity to know how to use social media or now have access or manage their emotions or think that, oh, I feel left out,

but let me question and interrogate this feeling before I project it onto my kids, right? That emotional, it is like middle schoolers. It literally is like, dealing with middle schoolers. Yeah. How do you navigate that with, you know, children of immigrants whose parents really grew up in survival mode? And that was what inhibited them in a lot of ways from developing that emotional intelligence. Like, how do you navigate this delicate balance of empathy and also being like the way that you're treating me is not emotionally healthy?

Yeah. That is such a good question. A lot of that work is, also about us managing our expectations of our parents. You can want something to be different, but we can't control other people. We can't control our parents. We can't make them different people. And so a lot of that acceptance work is grief work. I mean, I hear that all the time from my clients where they're like, I just wish my parents would understand that I'm trying to do this to have a better relationship with them. But we can't force them to understand that. We can't force them to have that kind of emotional acuity. And so, you know, if you are willing to do more of the work, Sometimes it's about taking what you're learning and bringing it back into the relationship,

modeling that behavior, validating their feelings. Hey, I know that you felt left out when we did this, but I just want you to know that it was really important to me to be able to spend this time with my spouse and my kids alone because we don't get that much time together. When's the next time we can all see each other, right? So giving to get, making sure that you're validating their feelings while also holding true to what is important to you. Sometimes we have to model that language, model that behavior.

And that's exhausting. And I know many people are like, I don't want to have to do that. And if you don't want to, that's okay too. Then you have to decide, I'm okay if that means that maybe the relationship falls apart and they feel bad and they start taking more distance from us. Every choice we make has a repercussion and we have to be able to be okay and hold ourselves accountable to what we are okay with. And we get to decide what that is. And so having oftentimes I talk about having empathy and compassion for our parents. but not at the cost of your own mental health and your own sanity and your own health, right? And so you have to decide what that is. Even between me and my siblings, what we are willing to tolerate from our parents looks very different because we are very different people with very different priorities. And so it really does, I mean, again, it's not a perfect answer, but it's like you just have to figure that out for yourself. And if you've never taken the time to do so, that would be my first piece of advice is take

some time to really reflect what is triggering to you? Why do you, why does it feel so bad to you? What is it that you might need? How might you be able to control your behavior to start getting those needs met? It might be setting behavioral boundaries. It might be, you know, protecting more of your time, protecting your spouse, protecting your kids. It might be doing things that are really uncomfortable and it might also include interrogating the guilt that comes up. The guilt doesn't mean that you're doing something wrong. It's telling you that maybe you're crossing a cultural value, but that value is not important to you. And that's okay. I think a lot of times my clients will feel guilt and then say, I'm a bad kid. I'm a bad daughter. I'm a bad son. And I'm like, you just took like 85 steps

forward without interrogating all of these points in between, which is what is the guilt actually trying to tell you? Are you uncomfortable because you feel guilt? Are you feeling uncomfortable because your parents might be disappointed? That's okay. We have to build up the tolerance for those, for that discomfort. And I think oftentimes we just want it to be so much easier than that. And it's not. it's not. Yeah, it's so true. And I love that you point out, like, this range of potential, like, responses or choices that we can make in those situations and how everybody, even within siblings, will make a different choice based on, like you said, there are priorities at that time and what's important to them. The biggest feeling that I noticed that comes up for these adult

children when we're telling them, like, try to understand or have empathy or speak to them in this way is this feeling of like, and I don't know if you've heard this as well, but this feeling of like, I didn't have access to this information either as a child. I was raised by you and you didn't teach me this, but I have found a way to learn it and to like step up and to become this emotionally intelligent person. And so I want you to do that too. And I don't want to have to teach you. And it becomes very frustrating, I think, when the parent is like, well, there weren't these tools around when I was young. I didn't have access to this. I don't know what to do. And you kind of are just like, can you read a book? Can you go to therapy? Is that something that

you encounter as well? It absolutely is. And I even encounter an extra layer, which is like a language barrier of like even accessing some of the books or the care because of language. And I mean, I think just that that deference to like I wasn't taught this is it's a scapegoat almost. It's. It makes it easier for that person for our parents so that not have to hold themselves accountable to their role in the dynamics, to maybe feeling discomfort that they might have not done things as well as they could have or that they have to now learn new things, which is really painful and difficult. And I see that in my own parents where it's like, okay, I have to now manage my expectations.

And when people get frustrated like that, often what I'm seeing is that they have higher expectations beyond their parents' capacity to meet them. You are always going to be disappointed if you have expectations of someone beyond their capacity to meet them. You can try to have conversations. You can say, hey, I know that you weren't, you didn't learn this either, but would you be willing to read this book with me or maybe watching a TV show with me on this topic or something like that? But if they keep saying no and resisting it, there comes a point where you know what the answer is and it's they're not going to change. And I think that's the hardest thing for people to accept is I'm so frustrated why aren't they just changing when in reality

it's how do I do this grief work to accept that they're never going to change now do I maintain this relationship with them do I you know change my relationship with them because they're not changing do I have to set you know firmer boundaries do I have to take physical or emotional distance away from them you know you have to make these really hard decisions and I think that's the part people don't like is that okay well now you're not doing this thing and you can be disappointed but if you don't also change something then nothing's going to change yeah right something has to change for for something to change and oftentimes we have to make that decision okay well i guess this means i'm going to have to visit less or i guess this means i'm going to have to pick up the phone less and that's the hard part

that's the thing that we we want to avoid so we're trying to like put the onus back on the other person but there's only so many times we can do that yeah this is where you and i are so aligned in our work, I think, is like this place of acceptance of like, this is who my parent is, this is what they're willing to do today. And so if they don't become a different person right now, how can I have a relationship with them and what does that look like? And how far am I willing to go to make this relationship work? And that's, you know, for anybody listening to this, like, that's going to be different for every single person. And your siblings, like you mentioned, may not be willing to go as far as you. You may not be willing to go as far as them. And that can create

some more barriers, especially if you have parents who are then kind of saying like, oh, well, your brother's so Americanized or, you know, he's not, you're not doing as much as them. It can create this more infighting within the family about who is participating correctly in the cultural family dynamics, right? A hundred percent. A hundred percent. I mean, I'm the only one in my family to go to therapy. And I, you know, people always ask me, well, I'm not the one who needs therapy. It's my mom. It's my brother. It's my dad. So why should I go? And to that I always say, I learned the tools to be able to manage and communicate and, you know, maintain my own sense, like learn my own values and learn the tools to be able to communicate them

or set those boundaries or not get so defensive in these interactions. I actually built the tolerance to be able to say, okay, here is what I'm able to tolerate in my relationships and here's what I'm not able to tolerate. And just by learning some of those tools, I actually show up differently in these relationships and then the relationships are different. And so it's really, it's really interesting because you're right. There is so much infighting that can happen because one person might be like more quote unquote emotionally mature or able to tolerate more things or able to manage and mediate more things, whatever it is. And I think there, that's where I think even though verbal boundaries are really culturally countercultural, they can become so important to say, I think you need

to talk to so-and-so about this. I'm not comfortable being in the middle of this. It's something I've had to practice doing where because I was parentified, I am someone now as an adult who's a therapist, it's not lost on me the irony there that I like became a therapist because I'm parentified. But I've also had to learn how to set those boundaries and say, I spent my whole life trying to be useful to my family by mediating, but now I need to learn to say, I think you actually need to talk to my brother about that. I don't think this is for me to have to, you know, hear. And it's hard because people who listen to this who might come from an immigrant family might say, I could never say that. And it's like there comes a point where we have to practice speaking up and saying those things.

You can still be respectful. And it might not sound the same as maybe, you know, no, period and knows this whole sentence. It might say no. And then you have an offer an explanation. But there are ways for us to set boundaries, even though that word isn't, isn't like a cultural term. Yeah, I think there's such a shift happening right now, especially you're a huge part of this with the work that you're doing, that for a long time this stuff was considered to be, people leave me comments all the time, like, oh, this is white people shit, like boundaries are for this group of people, not this group of people. And to me, that does such a disservice, like to our culture to say that our culture wants

certain people in the family to be miserable or to be harmed or that our culture is only protecting usually, you know, like the man in the family and not the children or the women or anybody else. And so I I no longer am like willing to tolerate that as an excuse. You know, I don't think that's what culture is. For me personally, it's not. No, it's not. And that's the whole first chapter of my book, like about interrogating what is normal and why are we using culture as a scapegoat for really unhealthy behavior and norms? Because that culture, that's become, quote, unquote, a part of our culture because it started somewhere, whether it was, you know, in our ancestors family many years ago because they had lack of access or maybe the way our

parents were parented and they, quote unquote, turned out fine. So then they're replicating the same dynamics. But it's still hurting someone. It's still someone has power. or someone doesn't have power, right? There's still ways that we are taught that we have to make ourselves small in order to maintain certain family dynamics. So my question is always at what cost? You know, we maintain these things, but at what cost to who? Because it doesn't look the same for everyone. I love that. Well, I am so appreciative of this conversation. I could talk to you about this stuff forever. So thank you so much. I didn't even have to look at any of my notes. It was such a great conversation. Can you please tell everyone where they can get your book and anything else

you'd like them to know about you? Yes, thank you. So I just came out with a book called But What Will People Say? Navigating Mental Health, Identity, Love, and Family Between Cultures. It's kind of an extended byproduct of all the work I've done on Brown Girl Therapy. So you can follow my work at Brown Girl Therapy on Instagram. I have a website, www.sahedgecorkoli.com, where you can find all of the information about buying my book across 12 countries, all of the book tour information. If you can, if I come to one of your cities and you can buy the book anywhere you like to buy books, you know, I always encourage people to go to their local library or local bookstore and request it because it always helps an author. But yeah, I, you know, I look forward to

continuing this conversation online, on my platform, but also hearing your conversations, Whitney, that you're having with people. I think they're so important. And just from someone who does this work, you know, with a specific cultural context in mind, I think that your work still helps so many people across cultures because you're asking and talking about the really hard conversations that people are scared to have with themselves and in their families. That really means a lot to me. So thank you for saying that. And thank you again for being here. I think everyone will get a lot from this conversation. Hopefully all go out and buy your book after they listen. So thank you again. Thank you.