Why We Need Hmong (POC) Therapists
Over the years, I’ve heard friends and family tell me they didn’t believe in therapy, they didn’t believe in someone who didn’t know them—just talking at them and telling them what to do.
Firstly, a good therapist wouldn’t do those things, but mostly, the right therapist for you would be exactly what you needed and how you needed them.
So I guess this is my letter to the high school grad wondering what they want to do, to the psychology student ready to give up, and the college grads that aren’t sure where they will fit. And this is a thank you to all our amazing Hmong therapists, who are already out there practicing.
This is even the letter to the one, who is tired of running circles with their demons, who are ready to be heard, to be seen, to be validated and finally the person they want to be. The one, who hasn’t found the right therapist for them yet.
This community needs you, our people need you, we need you.
Our people have spent all our ancestry surviving, we have spent centuries adapting, existing in specific systems.
But now that we’ve come so far running and building, we are finally sitting still in more success than we’ve ever dreamed of, but also more than we’ve ever known…we are hurting.
Because we’ve never had the chance for reflection, for introspection, for healing.
We need our Hmong therapists.
We need to be able to sit down in a session, without having to give an educational lesson on our generational trauma. We need space to speak of our struggle to find our balance in the two worlds we live in without having to illustrate what that would feel like. We have to be able to express the life of having “Americanized,” “Modernized.” or “Traditional” Hmong parents, without having to explain what that even means.
We need therapists who generally know what our parents went through, what our grandparents lived through, and how that bleeds onto us. They would be familiar with the struggles of our mothers, and the struggles of our fathers, our struggle as the eldest, the youngest, as a Hmong woman, as a Hmong man, as Hmong LGBTQ, as a Hmong non-binary, and as a collectivist culture in an individualist country.
We need our Hmong therapists.
To help us heal from where we are today, without having to explain in detail the generations before us.
We need Hmong therapists for our parents, who have never once spoken about the war they have survived, who still long for a home that only exists in memories. Who remember a world from a time before us; a time they spent their childhood, their youth, and even adulthood. We need therapists to uncover the hurt that our parents don’t want to show as weaknesses. We need our therapists for our parents who don’t know how to speak of themselves, who never once questioned why they do the things they do.
We need our Hmong therapists now more than ever.
If you are studying, don’t give up.
If you are practicing, don’t forget (and don’t forget self-care).
If you are battling, please, don’t give in.
We need you, we need each other.
You can find a therapist near you via psychologytoday.com, where you can find therapists by zip code, insurance provider, specific diagnosis, and treatments. You can read their bios and give them a free call to see if they would be the right fit for you.
MN Mental Health Providers of Color Database created by Larry Yang: http://bit.ly/2CDXSIf
A more affordable online resource: www.betterhelp.com