HealthyGamerGG - Why is it SO HARD to be a Good Asian Kid?

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

🎙️ Join Dr. K as he discusses the challenges faced by Asian-American kids in today's world. High competition in education and the job market often leads to a mental health crisis, with high suicide rates among Asian-American youth. Dr. K explores cultural factors contributing to this crisis and encourages kids to seek help and find their passions. Through therapy and coaching, they can overcome challenges and improve their mental health. 🌟 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every year that goes by, it's harder and harder to be a good Asian kid. And chances are, your parents actually don't care. If you look at things across the board, it's harder to be at the top of your class. It's harder to get straight A's. It's harder to get into good colleges. All kinds of jobs are actually getting more and more competitive now. So it used to be that you needed a good degree from an Ivy League institution to get a job at a top-tier company like Google. But now you actually don't even need a college degree. And so Asian kids in particular are kind of getting crunched, and we're seeing this in the form of a mental health crisis for Asian kids.

The simplest way that this is manifesting is incredibly high suicide rates. People between the ages of 20 and 24, for most Americans, it's actually accidents that's the number one cause of death. But since Asian kids are so freaking careful, right, you guys are not going to put yourselves in accident-prone situations. So actually, the thing that you have to be the most careful around is yourself. Suicide rates are incredibly high, and that's just one manifestation of the Asian American mental health crisis. So let's take a look at how some of these things intersect. And we're going to start off by looking at, is it actually getting harder to be a successful Asian kid? And this is where, unfortunately, the answer is yes.

So we're going to take one simple statistic. So if you look at medical college admissions tests amongst ethnicities, what you find is that if you want to get into med school in the U.S. and you're an Asian kid, you have to score in the top 20, of pre-med students. So you have to be in the top 23 out of 100 to actually get into medical school. If you're Caucasian, you still have to be in the top maybe 30 to 35 percent of students who are applying to medical school. If you're Latino, you actually have to be, you can be in the bottom half. So you have to be in the top 54%, which means that you just have to outperform 46 other students out of 100. And if you're black or African American, you have to be in the top 70, which means you just have to beat 23 out of 100 kids to get into med school.

I want to take a moment to thank our HG coaches. I've taught at a lot of different places and worked with a lot of different people. And honestly, our coaches are some of the best people I've ever worked with. HG coaches have helped over 10,000 people find purpose, direction, and improve their mental health. After about 20 weeks of coaching, the average client experiences a 58% improvement in sense of purpose in life, a 45% improvement in feelings of anxiety. even a 35% reduction in feelings of despair. And this isn't just me saying this. At this point, we've done this for three years,

run six research studies, and even presented our findings at the American Psychiatric Association National Conference. Over 100,000 sessions later, I can confidently say this works. So if you're interested in checking out H.E.coaching for yourself, go to healthygamer.ggyg slash coaching to learn more. Now, I'm not saying that this policy is necessarily bad.

So there are a lot of things that go into being a good doctor and forming a good application for medical school. And I'll be the first one to say that I think it's a great idea to have a lot of people in medical school who are not necessarily great test takers. There's a lot more to being a doctor than taking a test. At the same time, though, I think it's really important to acknowledge that if you look at it objectively, if you're an Asian kid who's applying to med school, you have to far outperform every other ethnicity. We're talking about some ethnicities that can even be in the bottom half of applicants or even close to the bottom quarter of applicants and still get into med school, whereas you have to be in the top 23%. So objectively, achieving the goals that your parents may set out for you

or that you may set out for you is actually really hard. The other problem that Asian Americans tend to deal with is this idea of a model minority myth. And if you grew up as an Asian kid, you kind of know that people are like, oh, so you're Asian, that means you must be good at math. But the truth of the matter is that Asian Americans or Asians in general are not like better or worse at anything than any other ethnicity. Similarly, it's not like black kids are better or worse or smarter or stupider than any other ethnicity. What we know from a ton of data about ethnicity is that there's a large variation within the population and that a particular race is not associated with any sort of particular performance. The challenge is that if you're an Asian kid, people measure you up.

and expect a lot more from you. And that puts a lot of pressure on us, especially when it comes from places like our parents. So we sort of know that Asian kids face a lot of this pressure, and this leads to a lot of stress. The problem is that as Asian kids are facing all of this pressure to succeed, and they don't necessarily have particularly advantages at achieving that success, they get kind of crunched and it affects their mental health.

It's bad enough that Asian Americans may actually have objective things going against them that makes it hard for them to succeed. But the real problem is that from a cultural perspective and family perspective, oftentimes our parents actually don't give a crap, right? They don't actually care that your disadvantage when applying to medical school. They just want you to be a doctor. And so now what we're going to dive into is some of the attitudes that result in this Asian-American mental health crisis.

The first thing that we're going to talk about is a high pressure for success. So a lot of us have parents who expect a lot of us from us, right? They actually don't really care about why we can't do something or even what we want to do. They expect us to succeed kind of no matter what. And if you're an Asian kid, it doesn't matter what your circumstances are. It doesn't matter what's going on in the world. You should succeed because I think you should succeed. Now, the next problem that we tend to run into if you sort of look at Asian American cultures,

is that we're all about saving face. So if you look at other people who struggle, so everyone's facing the same environment, right? So the world is getting harder for everybody. And then the question kind of becomes, well, if the world is getting harder for everybody, why is it that Asian American suicide, is it an all-time high? And y'all are number one or we're number one, right? We did it. We're number one.

What's going on there? Why is it that a harder situation in the world is affecting Asian-Americans specifically? And that has a lot to do with our culture and expectations. So we're going to dive into some cultural beliefs that make it hard for Asian-Americans to get help. and therefore deal with all of the problems in the world. The first thing is a very, very high reliance on personal responsibility. So like generally speaking, if you're an Asian kid or Asian American, if there's some problem in life, like you're responsible for fixing it.

Like especially if it's internal, right? Because getting help for stuff, like it's okay to get help for like math, math tutoring so you can be at the top of your class because go to Kuman class and whatever, right? That's okay. but any kind of personal deficiency that you have or any kind of struggle that you have, first of all, is equated to a personal deficiency because if you didn't get an A, that's your fault, right? Forget about the situation.

Forget about the environment. There's an emphasis on personal responsibility for everything. So there's no appreciation for environmental struggles, like your parents don't care that you're getting bullied, your parents don't care that you need glasses, your parents don't care that you need glasses, is your parents don't care about any of that stuff. They don't care that you have ADHD. They don't care that you have depression. Like that stuff isn't real.

Like, if there is a problem in your life, you should be able to fix it on your own, right? So that's the first belief that we've got to be super careful about. The second issue that's really, really concerning is a lot of Asian Americans and families care a lot about saving face. So this is also where if you're struggling,

first of all, you've got to fix it yourself. And secondly, you better not ask anybody else for help because what if people find out? oh my God, you're depressed, like you better not see a therapist. What if someone finds out that you see a therapist? What if you tell someone? No, my God, that would be so embarrassing. Because if you were seeing a therapist or if you were getting help for problems,

that would reflect poorly on us as parents. That means that we're not raising you right, right? This other kid down the street, or that boy down the street, he's not in therapy and he's getting AIDS, and his parents smack him more than I smack you. Like, what is your problem? We can't let any. know? And so since there's this emphasis on saving face, it means that you can't go to other people

for help, right? Because that's incredibly embarrassing and makes us look bad. Look what the hell is wrong with you? Not only are you screwing up, now you're going to make us look bad? That's a terrible idea. And the last thing that is actually kind of really unfortunate is that from an Asian American culture, oftentimes we only care about fixing what we can see. So Asian parents especially, like, they're totally fine getting you medical care because there's a broken bone and they can see that the bone is broken. They're totally fine getting you a math tutor because they can see the grade, right? It's a B instead of an A or a B plus instead of an A. And like, that's unacceptable. But if you really look at Asian American parents and culture, we really prioritize things that we can see. And the problem

is that with a lot of mental health struggles, you can't see them, right? What does it look like from the outside? Why are you so lazy? Get up. You should get up on time. You need to be studying more. I don't care. You should be sitting there at the desk and learn to concentrate. Just focus. Just do it. Just focus. Just do If they can't see it, it isn't real. And this sort of puts Asian kids in an incredibly tough spot because it's difficult for you to have a language to articulate what you're struggling with. And furthermore, since you can't show it to your parents, they don't take it seriously. If you're hearing what I'm saying, hopefully some of this stuff is resonating with you. Hopefully you sort of recognize that the world is becoming a slightly more difficult place.

Maybe your parents are putting way too much responsibility on you and that you feel a little bit, embarrassed or even actively discouraged from seeking help. So what do we do about this situation? Before we get there, I want to start by sort of doing a little cognitive test. So I'm going to say a couple things and I want you to pay attention to your reaction, okay? The first thing is that, hey, it's okay to get help, right? Like, you don't have to live life all on your own. It's like totally fine for you to get help. You should seek help. You deserve help. And pay attention to what your reaction is. If you kind of agreed with me intellectually like, yeah, like it is okay for people who are struggling to get help. It's not okay for me to get help. I should be able to do it on my own,

right? Like, I get that Dr. Kay is saying that it's okay for people to get help, but I should be able to do it on my own, right? I don't know if I really need help. I don't know if I deserve help. If that was your reaction, that's just a sign that you've been conditioned by this sort of like Asian American culture or Asian culture to over-rely on personal responsibility. Okay? So let's try another one. The world is objectively getting harder, right? It's okay. that you're not as successful as maybe you, quote, unquote, should be. Maybe actually the level of success that you have right now is appropriate. Maybe the reason that you're not at the top of your class is because you genuinely have a very

hard life. What's your reaction to that? Well, let's try this on for size. Yeah, but other people are able to do it. Right? So, hey, you're saying Dr. Kay that the world is getting harder, but Sejol is still able to get straight days? If your mind jumps to comparison and says, oh, but you're saying that everything is getting

harder for everybody, I should be doing better. And how do I know I should be doing it? Because other people are doing better. They're able to do it. So why shouldn't I be able to do it? If your mind jumps to comparison, when I talk about, oh my God, things are actually hard for you. And you say, yeah, but someone else is able to do it. That once again is Asian conditioning. Because what do Asian parents do? This person is getting straight A. That person is getting straight A. this person is getting straight-day and is winner of chess tournament. You got second place in chess tournament and second place in maths, and they are getting number one place in everything.

Why can't you be like them? Hmm? Hmm? And you can't say, well, maybe because their parents are emotionally supportive and actually help them instead of making them feel small and want to kill themselves. But you can't say that, right? So that's test number two. Like, what's your reaction when I say,

hey, the world is genuinely getting harder and like maybe it's, you're actually doing pretty well for your circumstances? If you turn to someone else, then like maybe that's a sign that you've been conditioned in this negative way. The last thing that we're going to talk a little bit about is if I say, okay, you should get help. And let's say that you bypass the first two cognitive traps. Then you're going to kind of say, well, it's expensive, right? I don't really know. How do I know it's worth it?

Because this is the third thing. I was once reading a paper on psychotherapy of Asian Americans specifically. And there's this really great quote where this one girl is like, every time I go to the therapist, all I'm thinking about is that this is costing my parents $5 a minute. Every minute that goes by, my parents are losing $5, $5, $5, $5, $5. $5. That's all I can think about. The whole time, I'm there. And am I using that $5 well enough? So if you're thinking about if I tell you to get help and your reaction is well, like, I don't know if it's going to be worth it, how do I know if it's worth it? So let's think about that for a second, because this I think is going

be revealing. So if you don't think that the help is worth it, sometimes people don't think that they, the help is worth it because they don't deserve help. Like, how much is this really going to help me? Is this going to help me 10%, 20%, 30%, I don't know if it's worth it. And this is what's really tricky is like, even if it isn't worth it, do you deserve the help anyway? Like, is it worth it for you to go see a therapist? Like, do you deserve to feel better about yourself? Do you deserve for life to be a little bit easier. And this is actually what's so devastating is when we're raised in a culture that places our value as human beings on our accomplishments or relative to other human beings when your parents say you are worth less than this kid down the street because they got a 4.0

and you got a 3.9. That does something very damaging to your self-esteem. And once you believe that you are not a good human being, then you are less worth investing in, right? Because if there's a 4.0 kid who has a problem, if he's at the top of the class and number one in this and number one in this and number one is, they're worth investing in, right? Because the return on your investment is going to be so high. But if you're an ordinary Asian kid who has super ordinary expectations on them, then you are going to feel like any kind of help may not be worth it. If you were worth more, it's worth more investing, right? It makes perfect sense. And this is actually what's so devastating because this is what keeps Asian American kids from reaching out for help because they're they're afraid

that they're not going to be worth enough. It's not going to be help them enough. And that's what's so devastating about it. And so now the last question is, okay, so like what do we do about this, right? Because we sort of know all kinds of stuff that there's Asian American mental health crisis. Suicide rates are very high. By the way, if you look at statistics on like Asian women, for example, they're the number one buyer of self-help books, right? So when they have a problem, it's personal responsibility. I shouldn't tell a damn soul. I'm going to order something from the dark parts of the internet on self-help and dealing

with depression and all this kind of stuff because no one can know. So the first thing that I'm going to say is you should get help. And all of those problems that we just talked about are going to crop up again. You're going to have those kinds of thoughts. Do I deserve it? Oh, like, but what if it doesn't work? Like, all those kinds of thoughts are going to crop up. The next thing to think a little bit about is I'm going to ask you a little bit about what you want.

So what do you want from life? Because the challenge here is that if you're an Asian kid, what you want has been like serially beaten out of you your entire life. Because if you're an Asian American kid, if you're an Asian kid, you grow up in a household. And what you want is like the least important thing in the universe. So like if you wanted to learn bass guitar or saxophone, like, what are you talking about, kid? It's like piano or violin. Like, if you want to be a real rebel, you can learn the cello, I guess. It's like, you've got to learn one instrument.

You got to do one extracurricular. You got to do math club, debate club, maybe. And then you can learn the one sport. And they're approved sports. You can't learn lacrosse. You can be like a competitive swimmer. You can learn tennis. Like, there are a couple of sports that you can do, but you can't do basketball.

That's crazy. Soccer. Like, I don't think so. Maybe. Maybe soccer. There's the pre-approved things. And so your whole life, what you want has been knocked out of you. And so what do Asian kids do?

They rebel in secret ways. Yeah, my parents force me to be an engineer, but instead of actually studying, because I can't bring myself to study because I actually don't want to be an engineer, I'm going to just play League of Legends and sit in my basement all day, right? I'm going to skirt by with bees,

and then my parents are going to yell at me some, and I'm not going to say anything. I'm going to clam down. I'm going to become a shell of my former self, and then once they stop yelling at me, I'm going to go back to school, and I'm going to try really hard to change my life, and I'm going to keep playing League of Legends.

So you're going to have your quiet rebellion. So how do we turn this ship around? Let's start by asking you, what do you want? And the second question then becomes, okay, if this is what you want, are you willing to accept some help in getting it? Because there is a ton of stress. Like, are you okay accepting some help? Notice I didn't ask, do you deserve help?

Do you need help? I'm not going to ask those questions because we know what the answers are. Do you deserve help? Well, other people don't deserve it. So why should I deserve it? I don't deserve it because I got Cs instead of A's. and the kids who deserve help or the kids who deserve anything are the ones who are the model Asian kids. And what about the need question? Did I ask, do you need help? No, of course not. Because if I ask you,

do you need help, what are you going to say? Oh, my God, it's so pathetic that I need help. I better not tell a soul. It's so incredibly shaming. And we'd lose so much face if people knew that I needed help. So we're not going to steal clear of those questions. Because the question that I'm going to ask you is for the things that you want. Are you willing to accept help? How long do you want? How long do you want to continue living this way? Right? Like, is it worth it? Like, you're not accomplishing your parents' dreams, which by the way is why they

manufactured you, right, is to be an instrument of their dreams. And you're not living your own life. Like, you're disappointing them and your life sucks. So are you willing to consider accepting some help? Because the good news is that help helps a lot. Like, if you're in this situation, I can say this from the bottom of my heart. This is as an Asian kid who almost failed out of college, had less than a two. 2.0 GPA and then, you know, was my parents' worst nightmare, which is, oh my God, my

Alok has a 1.9 GPA? Oh my God, he's going to fail. And then a decade later, oh, my God, my Alok is at Harvard. Oh, my God. I did both. And here's what I can tell you from the bottom of my heart. You absolutely deserve help. You should absolutely get help. Because life isn't a single player game. And the whole point is that your parents can place expectations on you. And even in their way, it's not like they're trying to abuse you, hopefully. They're trying to help you in the way that they know how, but the culture weighs on them too. So it's okay to get help. So I'd say if you're concerned, like if you're having thoughts of suicidality or anything like that, you should absolutely go see a therapist. You know, you should

consider getting evaluated for depression if that's a concern for you, anxiety, if that's a concern for you, absolutely go see a therapist. And the point here is not whether you need it or whether you deserve it or things like that. What I'm going to ask you is what do you want from life? And do you want to continue living this way? If the answer to those questions is no, the answer is very And if you're saying, but I'm not mentally ill, right? Some people are mentally ill, and I'm not mentally ill. Well, like, we recognize that, right? And so what I found is that a lot of Asian kids would wind up in my office eventually, especially once I started doing things on the internet. And they're like, oh, this guy understands me. They'd come in and they'd be terrified that I'd diagnose them with mental illness. And if they had a qualified diagnosis, I would diagnose them. Fair enough. We'd start treatment. But what I actually found is that I could help a ton of them, too. And that they didn't necessarily need psychotherapy or cognitive behavioral therapy or exposure therapy or medication? Does help me mean I need to start medication? No, it doesn't.

But what I actually helped them do is like discover what they want, discover what they care about, help them talk to their parents, help them like learn new skills to navigate life. And it's that piece that we actually like, and then more and more Asian kids started reaching out to me and then I couldn't, I was getting 10,000 requests a month and that's like literally why we started a coaching program.

Because the problem with life is that people need a lot of help because the world is changing, but not all help is therapy. And it's okay to benefit from help. It's okay to get help from people and it not be therapy. And this is what's so tricky about a lot of Asian American kids is this is what's really bizarre

is there's one study I saw recently that showed that over 50% of people who are suicidal are not even mentally ill. And we're starting to learn a little bit more about suicide, which is that a lot of people think about suicide when they don't have a road forward to accomplishing their goals. And so this is the bizarre thing

is that even as an Asian American, your conceptions of what health is and help is and what it means and what it indicates about you, all of those can be wrong too. So I'd start by really asking yourself, what do I want? Because chances are, that's a voice that you've turned all the way down to mute. Your parents turned all the way down to mute. Do you want to continue living the life the way that you're living it now? Could it be better? And just like you have a math tutor, you can have a mental health tutor. I'd start, I'd definitely start with a therapist if you're considering suicidality. But, you know, that's why, like, what's the tutor for your mind? Like, what's the tutor for life? That's like, that's what coaching is, right? So get some kind of

help, whatever it is. And I'm not going to say, I was about to say you deserve it, but I'm not going to say that, even though you do, but I know what that's going to do to you, right? You're going to be like, ah, I don't deserve it. If I had gotten an A, I would deserve it. Don't say that, Dr. K. Don't imply that I have internal self-worth that is not related to my accomplishments. But seriously, just like, who cares whether you deserve it or not? If it's going to help you, go get it.