By Jason Wu, Ph.D.
There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?”
And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”
– David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water”
This excerpt beautifully illustrates what it is like to be in a system without even realizing it – sometimes, unless we are told by someone wiser and has a different perspective, we don’t even know what we’re swimming in. Truth to be told, the context of the original speech is a little bit different from what I’m using his parable for, but whatever, I’m making it work to make my point.
Culture is all around us – it seeps through our interactions with our friends, colleagues, and family. It carries beliefs, values, and practices across generations and creates community and connection. Whatever your background, you are a cultural being, whether that’s based on your ethnicity, language, class/socioeconomic status, hometown, or even your hobbies and interests. And this is true of all people – we are all affected by the water in our fishbowl, whether we are aware of it or not.
In terms of mental health, there is solid research (http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0020764003494001) that demonstrates some of the interactions between culture and cultural identity with mental health. Using myself as an example, the fact that I look Chinese causes individuals around me to treat me a certain way and make assumptions – “he must be good at math” or “he must come from an upper-middle class background like most of the Asians in the area.”
What I have seen is that when the people I’ve worked with have become more in touch with their various cultural identities, the more self-aware they become of their own prejudices and biases, and they also learn how they relate to other people. They may have struggled to understand why they didn’t connect with a group of people, but upon reflecting on their own cultural identity, they realized that they had very different cultural values that made it hard for both sides to understand each other. Or they might realize that they face microaggressions daily, and that these experiences actually impact their mental health and sense of self/self-esteem.
My hope is to help people learn more about the different facets of their cultural being, which can often illuminate what’s REALLY going on in the water around them that might be causing them pain or suffering.
If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to call (650-517-3213) for a free phone consultation or email me at jasonwu87@gmail.com – note, email is not a secure form of communication but we can always use email to schedule a free phone appointment.