Becoming a South Asian Therapist in America

Written by: Michelle Ahmed, LMFT

“Difference is the most beautiful thing that exists in the world—it is the power to challenge, learn, and grow from one another and the opportunity to sing and harmonize in chorus. Where would our full song be without the different notes, intonations, and fluctuations in our voices?”

I have been writing, re-writing, and considering this piece for over a year and far before this pandemic hit. I never seem to have the right words, the right organization, or the right resources—so here I am putting my thoughts and feelings into words however they come. I am a therapist—a South Asian, Bangladeshi American, bisexual woman, singer, artist, and writer—and I am the “other” in Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC).

The term BIPOC has only recently surfaced as an attempt to unify and connect us within this white supremacist system while emphasizing that B[lack] and I[ndigenous] folk are the most marginalized. There is an unspoken hierarchy amongst the men that built this country that continues today—one that has structurally divided people of color and pinned them against one another to keep Black folk at the bottom of the structure—one that has given other people of color (a.k.a. me and other white-appearing/light-skinned POC) access to white privilege in order to keep us silent in the disenfranchisement of our Black siblings as long as we are able to achieve some power, resources, and maintain safety in this world. This shows up in Chicago as: a lack of empathy and rivalry between the Latinx community and the Black community; this shows up as non-Black South Asians taking jobs that fill the POC markers that a company needs to fill; this shows up as discord and bigotry between South Asians and East Asians in academia and on racism; and it shows up as millions of Black folk intentionally set up to land in prison for crimes that white folk in positions of high power commit (i.e. drug trade, sex trafficking, the prison slavery system). The divide begins with the revocation of choice as this oppressive white system resists BIPOC from connecting, from communicating, and expanding the knowledge of shared truths.  

I am the other in BIPOC and I am excited and singing with pride. Finally—something that allows us to share our experiences and validate one another! On the other hand, the term BIPOC can also gloss over the diversity within marginalized groups and the ways in which we have been forced to compartmentalize and store each of our identities into different boxes on different shelves only to be taken out and worn when in the “appropriate” or in a safe environment. The pandemic has magnified (for the first time to white folk and many non-Black POC) the ways in which our system is shattered and crumbling with structural racism that dehumanizes BIPOC, specifically Black folk. Thus, the need for a term that unites BIPOC folk in allyship, yet somewhat begins to identify the individuality within our shared identities as we develop throughout this racist system, is high—and it begins NOW. Writing this song does not come easy and reading through this will not either.

As a therapist I invite you to take a slow, controlled inhale through your nose, feel your chest rise all the way, and then let it out slowly through your mouth as if you are blowing through a straw. Notice the physical sensations in your body scanning from head-to-toe. If you are feeling discomfort at any point during this song, I invite you to pause, bring your attention back to your breath, notice your body, and adjust as you need to. It is okay to take breaks, and we will make it through this journey together.

Ok, are you centered?

Let’s begin…

When I say, “I am South Asian, Bangladeshi American, bisexual woman,” there is a disclosure—and it is this: I did not possess an understanding regarding what these identities meant to me until I began graduate school and was forced to face them in Carl Hampton’s (lecturer for The Family Institute’s Power Privilege and Difference course) class at Northwestern University in 2017. Before this, these identities were empty words tattooed on my skin like a tramp stamp as if the identities were some large mistake I drunkenly got because someone else uttered them into existence and I went along with it. I would fill my lungs with nervous laughter and brush it off as if it were something taboo and not worth discussing further. It felt like a broken record—the “I smell curry” coughs as I walked down the hallway in high school, the “Boogawhats” when I identified Bangladesh on a map as a country next to India but is not India at neighborhood parks, the “what flavor of Brown are you?” as I attended cultural diversity and group relations trainings in higher education, and the “if you kiss a woman while dating a man is that considered cheating?” when I explored my sexuality outside of my bedroom closet. I could not seem to fix the broken record no matter what I answered. I was always met with blank stares, laughter, confusion, and my heart and lungs filled with repulsion and shame every time I had to sing the same old song again. Every time I took a shower, I would rub my skin raw in attempt to wash the tramp stamps away and hope that the sound of the water flowing through the tap would drown out my singing.

These words, "South Asian, Bangladeshi, and bisexual,” embodied shame, guilt, and embarrassment—none of which were mine. This Brown skin I wear has hidden depths. It is something I cannot take off because they (white folk) see it whenever they look at me, yet it does not feel like my own as others are constantly defining and assuming what it means without checking in with me. They are staring at my album cover, vibing with my beat, and disregarding the lyrics and the melodies and harmonies that I worked so hard to weave. To others it means that I am aggressive, exotic, erotic, summertime fun, abnormal, less than, object, token, a means to growth, stupid, naïve, colorful enough, and not Black. Carl’s class struck the “not Black” chord so loud it rung in my ears for days. I realized my marginalization not only isolated me from white folk, but from other people of color as well. I was not white or Black, I was Asian but specifically South Asian, I was South Asian but not Indian or Pakistani—I was Bangladeshi and a woman…a bisexual woman. I had never said that out loud in front of so many people. It was like singing through a microphone for the first time—I sang louder and louder only to hear a clamor of screeching feedback until there was no longer clarity in what I was singing. I can’t hear me. Can you hear me? Had I compartmentalized so deep that I had lost parts of myself in someone else’s lyrics?

Pause. Remember to breathe.

Just as I mentioned before, check in with your body, readjust yourself, and begin again.

We are in the present together.

Last week, I said to my mother for the first time in my life, “Mom, most of my friends have been Black or Brown my whole life. I only brought a few white friends around you because you and Papa are racist.” “We are not racist,” she exclaimed with furrowed brows. It was so easy for her to shrug race off. There was privilege dripping from her voice—and this is the same song I have heard other South Asians sing as they begin to achieve their white American dream in the suburbs. “Maybe you think you aren’t, but you just asked me, ‘Do you like Black people now?’, ‘Why aren’t you friends with Iranians or Asians?’, ‘Do your Black friends live in the South Side?’, and ‘We aren’t Brown, we are Asian.’ My mother could not comprehend why her questions were prejudiced towards and painful for others—she could not even see the colorism she exhibits within our own family. My mother’s skin is an almost-white, olive. My brother and I on the other hand, we are Brown, and my brother’s skin is a much darker shade of Brown than mine. I found myself singing:

She doesn’t see our skin.
She doesn’t see our shade.
She doesn’t see the pain I have been carrying throughout my life.
She’ll never understand.
She’ll never understand.
She’ll never hear the songs I’ve had to sing as I strive to rise.

The way that race continues to color my life whether I want it or not is invasive and traumatizing. It is as if I am in a constant state—of hypervigilance—and that I must work 10 times as hard just to get through what is considered a typical encounter for my white peers. It means that others point out the shoes I am wearing as unprofessional when I choose to wear boots instead of high heels to an interview, it means choosing to wear my glasses in order to demand authority in a white space rather than be deemed as unworthy or unintelligent, it means taking out my nose ring—an important aspect of Bengali female culture—every time I step into a “professional” meeting, it means feeling like I am being interviewed for my worth even when my white peers seek me out for my expertise, and it means holding my emotions together when I am in pain from the microaggression I just faced while conducting therapy with my white client so that my client can feel safe enough to process their emotions.

Pause. Remember to breathe.

As a therapist, silence can be a powerful choice—one that is survival, one that is as painful as a thousand daggers in your heart, or one that is loud enough to suppress history. To the listeners who are searching for white voices only, my silence will not be heard. I am choosing to stay silent no longer because as hard as I am working, I remember that my Black peers are working 100 times harder. It has been my access to white privilege as a non-Black other POC to stay silent to what I am witnessing happening to others and to myself. It is time for me to speak loudly and firmly. It is time for me to lament with all my strength for my dying sisters and brothers and to sing in crescendo for the voices that are elaborately and conveniently ignored. Difference is the most beautiful thing that exists in the world—it is the power to challenge, learn, and grow from one another and the opportunity to sing and harmonize in chorus. Where would our full song be without the different notes, intonations, and fluctuations in our voices?

Pause. Remember to breathe.

I was born a singer and an artist. My parents said that as an infant I never cried. If I needed attention, I would sing. “Sing?” I asked. “You sang,” they said, “back and forth between two notes,” and that is how I learned to vibrato. When I was three, I began to vibrato all over the walls and tables with finger paints—splashing vibrant colors and rich tones into my world. It was only in middle school when I realized I was any good. I was living in Bangladesh for three years at the time and I remember when I sat in my very first music class. We were going to sing Sunny Day, and I was terrified because I had never sung in front of anyone other than my parents before. I felt my heart racing and my body trembling as I heard everyone else’s voices—and then I sang. In that moment everything shifted—it was as if I could feel everyone’s voices in my own heart and feel them vibrate throughout my entire body. My heart slowed down, and I relaxed as I began to crescendo. In that same week, I created artwork for my history, science, and math classes. I used paints, colored pencils, and clays to build figurines. My body rhythmically swayed from side to side as I used the colors to express how history made me feel—it was as if I were dancing to music no one else could hear. I had never been happier or more relaxed in my life as I am when I am singing or painting. I always believed I was born with a passion for music and art, however, three years ago I realized that it was my body’s natural way of healing from trauma. Through this natural development of what felt good in my lungs, my heart, my body, and my mind, I chose to become a singer, a painter, and eventually a writer.

As a singer, artist, and writer, I was able to explore my emotions in a way I could not elsewhere.

Here is my pain,
Here is my grief,
Here is the joy that no one else sees.

This song and colorful dance came with failure—failure to connect with others, failure to connect with myself, failure to make sense of my experience, and failure to getting it down right. However, through the process of failure—all the missed notes, the mismatched pitch, the coloring outside the lines, the bleeding and blending of unwanted colors—I started to find healing beyond the joy and solace it initially brought me. I was experiencing the mind-body connection I learned about decades later. The singing was strumming a vibration from my vocal chords that connected the following: the natural rhythm of my heart, the resonance, the deep and controlled breathing, the use of my right brain (emotions/non-verbal processing, visuals, creativity), and the use of my left brain (language/verbal processing, analytical thought, planning). The art was connecting my mind to my body, allowing me to engage several senses, shift movement from side-to-side in a way that regulated my nervous system through the right and left brain movement, and sit through the present moment while expressing and tolerating the distress I was experiencing. Soon enough, I was able to sit through the process and put it into poetry and even into a blog post that connects personal experience, poetry, and research in psychology. Inadvertently, naturally, and then intentionally, I reclaimed my identity defined in my own terms not by my family, not by my society, not by some class I took, but bit by bit through the process of failure, repair, striving, and maintenance—like many other people of color.

Pause. Remember to breathe.

Making mistakes is like wandering in unknown territory in the dark. Of course, you didn’t know where you were going, it’s unknown territory and it’s dark! All you need to do is breathe, tell yourself it’s okay, and slowly put one foot in front of the other as your eyes adjust to the night sky and your ears adjust to notes you’ve never heard before. Only once you allow yourself wander fearlessly will you start to learn how to navigate this new path.

I have been searching for a way—more specifically the “right” way—to connect my personal experiences to what is going on in this world when I came to the realization that my experience is both nuanced and also shared with many. In my work with clients I see interracial and multicultural individuals, couples, and families struggling with their identities within this larger world and within their intimate relationships. For many of my biracial clients, it means yearning to be seen as a person of color while simultaneously pushing that part of their identity away because of the pathology and pain that comes along with that in this country. For many of my multicultural clients, it means figuring out which identity they are safe to embody in any given space, a.k.a., codeswitching to match the audience in their environments. Which version of myself am I safe to show up as here and now? This is the shared experience that bicultural and biracial people experience in varied and nuanced ways. There is no “right” way. There are just the simultaneous songs we sing in synchronized harmony.

As a South Asian, Bangladeshi American, bisexual woman, singer, artist, and writer, I invite you to:

Pause. Breathe. And sing your song.

One love,

Michelle Ahmed, LMFT 

Acknowledgments:

Thank you all for this invaluable life lesson. You have all helped, encouraged, and challenged me to find my voice and bloom my song into so much more.

Bukky Adeyinka, LMFT

Joe Bozeman, PhD

Rayne Bozeman, PhD

Beth Chung, LMFT

Magdalene Gorecki-Eisenburg, Art Educator

Cicely Green, Counselor

Carl Hampton, LCSW

Johnny Hayes, Music Producer

Nosheen Hydari, LMFT

Chaaze Roberts, LMFT

Nadira Shah, Music Educator

Daniel Tapanes, PhD

Amy Wu, LMFT