Family Fights and Failing Grades
Anonymous
When I first began to “open up” about my experiences with mental health in my Asian American household, I was shocked at how relatable my stories were. Even though everyone I talked had their own unique experiences regarding this subject, we shared a sense of understanding and empathy that was both comforting and concerning. However, to elaborate on a topic that can so easily be reduced to statistics and facts, I can pull from my own experiences. If you, like me, are a teen who finds yourself relating to any of the themes prevalent in this narrative, it may be indicative of a larger issue concerning the mental health stigma within our community. If you are a parent, please go into reading this with an open mind. In no way am I claiming that my family is representative of an entire group, but I hope sharing my story can provide some insight into an all-too-common struggle. (Before continuing, I would like to mention that my brother and I have never explicitly discussed what happened with him—everything I say is based solely on what I have seen and what he has expressed).
Five years ago, I watched as my father ripped an article about depression into shreds right in front of my brother’s eyes. The fluttering scraps of paper landed in a brimming pile of recycled materials, a somewhat ironic metaphorical representation of the way mental health was treated in my household. My ten-year-old self tried to comfort my brother, telling him that it was simply a piece of paper that had been destroyed; look, I can even find the same one online and reprint it! Little did I know that the decimated paper was not the main issue—my father’s blatant refusal to talk about this pamphlet, even if it was for a school assignment, was my first memorable exposure to my parents’ beliefs (or disbeliefs) about mental health.
Ever since my childhood, there has always been a disregard for the role emotional well-being plays in our health. Possibly due to the cultural expectations for Asian males, this disregard was heavily reinforced on my brother. For example, after an incident where my parents shamed my brother for his grades, he lay in a ball as he cried by the stairs. Passing by, my father simply looked down, kicked in him the back, and walked upstairs to prepare for bed. When I struggled with the anxiety that began to interfere with my daily life, my parents were quick to tell me to “calm down,” stop worrying, and go study. While my brother and I agreed that our family’s emotional support system was lacking, I did not begin to see the true impacts of disregarding mental health until my brother started his sophomore year.
The first symptoms that something was wrong appeared in freshman year, however, when my brother’s previous all-A track record began to falter as his assignments continued to go missing. By sophomore year, his grades began to slip, along with his work ethic and mental health. He got his first B, then skipped his first class, and my parents’ dreams for his future were torn apart.
In my parents’ eyes, there was no reason for my brother to be struggling. The pressure they had put on him throughout his life was considered normal in their culture, maybe even expected. All their Asian parent friends were doing the same thing, and their children seemed to be doing wonderfully academically. They provided him the financial support to play sports, attend extracurriculars, and take supplementary classes—what more did he need?
Throughout his sophomore year, his complaints of being overworked and stressed only grew louder and more frantic as the school year continued. He kept pleading for some form of understanding or empathy from my parents, but they provided none.
For example, he broke down in the midst of another argument about his grades, expressing how he had been feeling the symptoms of depression ever since he was twelve. Although he did not place the blame entirely on my parents’ shoulders, he held them responsible for compounding much of the pressure for him to live up to the “perfect” Asian son. Even as a seventh-grader who was barely at the age of eleven, it was plain to see the damaging effects of the stress on him. My brother tried everything he could to show my parents the validity of mental health, bringing up everything from his grades to depression to articles.
With every point he brought up, my mother slowly looked away as if holding his stare for any longer would bring her over the brink of understanding. At that moment, my brother’s irises burned with hope, thinking he may have gotten through to her. However, my father was clearly not listening as his face slowly rearranged itself into an expression of disgust before bursting into his own tirade.
“This is manipulation! Mental health is a myth, and you’re only bringing it up now to garner sympathy! Well, guess what? I refuse to fall for this. You’re just trying to compensate for your incompetence with these lies!”
And that was that.
This was a statement to be echoed by my parents again and again to preserve their pride. To give in to the notion that their son had become a failure because of something as absurd as mental health would be to give in to the notion that they, as parents, had failed to care for their child the way they should have. That could not be.
My brother started pleading for a therapy session or the ability to discuss his mental well-being with someone who understood—naturally, my parents refused. The cloud of stigma around seeking help was dense, dark, and seemingly impossible to overcome. They told him that if he didn’t talk with his friends so much, if he didn’t stay up late at night, if he had listened to my parents from day one, none of this would be happening. And even further, my mother still clung to the hope that everything he was going through was a “phase” that would blow over as soon as he hit junior year.
“But why?” she would lament to her friends. “Why him? Why is he so lazy, refusing to be hardworking, while your sons are so bright, studying hard, and doing well in school?”
“Do not worry,” they repeated. “Our sons, they are not perfect as well. But it is just a phase, he will get better soon enough.”
To them, the biggest indicator of whether my brother was “getting better” was his grades, and unfortunately, they were not improving. Junior year, my parents succumbed to the idea that they were the “hardworking parents who simply had a disappointment for an Asian child,” removing most of the blame and guilt from their shoulders. My brother’s report card was stained with Cs and Ds and Fs as the tally of absences only continued to increase, leading to detentions and calls with school authorities.
You might be wondering: why didn’t the school do anything? Did they not notice any of these signs? And to that question, I would honestly answer that part of the reason the school took no action was because they chalked him up to a “burn-out Asian student.” His life, and his narrative, could be simplified to a story of pressure, Asian tiger parenting, and a child who ended up breaking. From what I know, there was little consideration of what other factors, including mental health, could have played into his academic downfall, a byproduct of the model minority myth.
As the months went by with little change, my parents realized my brother was not coming out of his “phase” anytime soon. Despite their previous refusal to let him seek help, they began to loudly advocate for him to go to therapy. This help, they believed, would “fix” him and his “illness.” My brother was not appreciative—he knew just as well as I did that their main motives were to bring his grades up while making themselves feel better about their parenting. They scheduled appointments for him, putting on the act of concerned parents worried about the mental wellbeing of their son, while their day-to-day rhetoric starkly contrasted with any possibility of caring about mental health. My father would drag him by the arm and into the car, trying to force him to go to these sessions, adamant that they would have the ability to set him on the right path. When my brother protested, my parents grew frustrated. Now that they were encouraging him to go to therapy, he was refusing. What else could they, the woeful, loving, trying parents, do? If they were doing everything they could and nothing was changing, who was to blame?
I, who had largely taken my parents’ side in the arguments, was beginning to grapple with a better understanding of mental health. I had tried to play the friendly intermediary, refusing to choose sides and trying to help both, but it had never worked. No number of articles, statistics, or statements could change my parents’ minds. One of the most distinct memories I have of this time was when my mother and I had a conversation while sitting in our parked car. Why was she so adamant that mental health was a “myth”? Why was she so unwilling to accept the real, adverse impacts of mental health on our lives? Weren’t her children living proof?
Although she gave no concrete answer to these questions, she mentioned my brother’s response to a question she had asked the day before: how he will face his teachers after missing so many days of school?
His response was: “It doesn’t matter, because I’ll never see them again anyway.”
To me, this sounded worrisome. Disturbing. Alarming. In short, almost suicidal. My mother, on the other hand, had recited this statement like any other—clipped, a slight overtone of disgust, and a lilting undercurrent of exasperation. No, she continued to tell me, his claims at “depression” could simply be boiled down to manipulation. This was his weapon; by conveniently breaking down to pull sympathy from the other party, he would be able to get his way. She ignored my warnings concerning the alarms his statement set off, and in that moment, I felt true helplessness and fear.
A question burned in my mind: what if I woke up one day, and my brother was gone?
Thankfully, this question remained unanswered. However, those fears helped me come to terms with the Asian cultural perspective of depression, and more specifically, suicide. Suicide was considered complete surrender and the utmost dishonor, so much so that there was no talk of it because it was buried under layers of tradition and shame.
One year later, 2 AM in the morning, I sat with my brother and watched as he removed the hard drive from my father’s computer. He sat on the floor with my father’s computer dissected on the floor, silence floating in the air. Out of nowhere, he flicked the hard drive at me.
“Did you know, junior year, my friend committed suicide?”
I shook my head. No, I did not know, and to this day, I’m still not sure if his statement is true because he has never mentioned it to me again. However, the reason this seemingly small, random confession had such a profound impact on me is simply because I did not know that something like this had happened. In all honesty, even while I had my fears, a part of me stayed in the mindset that there was no way my brother could possibly commit suicide. I had been told over and over again that suicide was “selfish,” and only “cowards” could do such a thing. But the fact that something like this had happened, combined with how it likely contributed to my brother’s mental health, was a shock that I had never anticipated.
From here, I guess I can transition to my next segment that attempts to serve as a conclusion to this piece. As I am writing, I’m still a teen, and it would be deceiving to claim that everything has been resolved. My parents, although still not the most accepting of mental health were willing to let me attend a few therapy sessions in my freshman year when my symptoms of anxiety worsened to where it was severely affecting my sleep and school. However, the biggest attempt they made to better our family relationship was when they started family therapy with me.
Despite the nagging feeling that their intentions were not entirely pure, I was initially optimistic. The therapist was friendly, but it quickly became apparent that she was not familiar with many of the cultural ideals within our family because she had so little experience with Asian American families. In these sessions, my parents argued a cultural stance: China and America were not alike in the ideals of raising children, and hundreds upon hundreds of years of history had shaped a culture that didn’t accept mental health. I argued from a distance of change through time: it had been seventeen years since they came to America, and their damaging mindsets could be changed if only they weren’t so stubborn. But did they even want to let go of their beliefs, no matter how damaging? Was this abandoning their culture?
A few months after starting family therapy, my father pulled us out after the therapist threatened to call CPS on him. It has been over a year, yet my family still doesn’t accept mental health the way I wish they could. Ideally, all of what had happened in the last five years would have changed their mindset. Ideally, they would have become supporting parents who embraced the idea of therapy and seeking help. But we don’t live in an ideal world, and I could everything I have gone through to be worthless because they failed in changing my parents. However, given that so many others have similar stories to mine, I hope that my experiences can be worth sharing. I hope that they can help highlight a problem within the Asian American community that makes the mental health stigma seemingly impossible to fight. We shouldn’t give up. I don’t know how, when, or if my family will change. Hundreds of years of culture, shame, and tradition cannot disappear at whim. But there are so many other changes that can be made, no matter how small.
Looking back at my story, my family’s issues do not stem from only one person—in fact, one of the largest contributors to exacerbating our conflicts lies within the stigma around mental health in the Asian American community. However, it is not the job of one singular person to magically solve all of our issues. I encourage any Asians reading this, regardless of age, to start advocating for mental health within your own community. Share articles, information, and stories, but most importantly, share a sense of community and understanding. I want to see a future where we can work together to destigmatize mental health and seek help, where we can count on our parents to support us on each of our own journeys. While this goal may be far away, we can begin working towards this dream today.
Nobody in my family plays the singular role of a “poor, innocent victim.” Everyone has done damaging things, and everyone has suffered. There is only so much this narrative can cover and only so much I know. I would like to believe that my brother telling me what he did was somewhat of a relief for him. But I also cannot know how much struggle is painted behind those words.
If you’re a parent, I want to restate that my negative experiences with my parents are not meant to reflect badly on you or your parenting. Many Asian parents do support their children, and those who do not often do so from a place of lacking education.