The LGBT among us have their stories of how they come out or not come out to their families, this one is from the Asian perspective.
Archive for Relationships
Brene Brown: The power of vulnerability
This is shared by a friend of mine, and here I would like to share it with you – TED video clip of Brene Brown’s talk on “The Power of Vulnerability”. Her message is powerful and clear: Vulnerability is necessary for human connection.
Managing Holiday Stress and Family Relationships
Do you feel stressed out by the holiday season? With all the parties, celebrations or get together during this time, it is quite common to feel overwhelmed and stressed by dealing with family relationships.
Holiday gatherings are meant to be times to be with our families and friends. However, holidays can also become cause of our stress. Why? Despite the best intentions from all, our old family patterns come back easily. Family conflicts are intensified when we have to spend extended period of times with families whom we may not choose to spend time with in the rest of the year.
Family conflicts also may happen when expectations are high regarding how “ideal family” should be. The holiday times can be quite intense for many, with added pressure to behave in certain ways, give expensive gifts, or try to be jolly. In addition to personality differences, stress might be added when there may be clash of different cultural, religious or traditional practices from family members by marriage, or blended families like step families or adopted families.
Being realistic about your expectation of the holidays is one way to manage the stress. Try to look ahead and be aware of what feelings may be coming up for you. If you already know that certain needs or expectations were unmet in the past, they are unlikely to be met this year without some changes. Are there ways for you to request or make your needs known so they are more likely to be met? Or could you let go of expectations? You might also make a conscious decision to spend more time with those whom you care about deeply rather than forcing yourself go through meaningless or superficial gatherings.
Setting limits and being clear about our boundaries are other ways of preventing us from feeling burnt out. This can be applied to situations ranging from how much time to spend with others, how much time is reserved for your family only or for your alone time, to how much money or energy to spend on cooking, shopping, gifts, or taking trips.
If you are interested in reading more about Joy’s psychotherapy practice, please visit: psychotherapywithjoy.comIntercultural Relationship
This article is co-authored by Hayden Dover, MFT and Joy Tsai Yuan Hung, MFT.
Today people traveling and migrating around the globe is more commonplace and unprecedented than ever before. In the United States our population is becoming increasingly racially and culturally diverse. Telecommunications technology and the internet have made connecting with people far away much easier. Along with this increased interconnectivity and intermigration has come an increasing acceptance of other races, traditions and cultures, much more so then was the case a generation or two ago. All of this has led to an increase in intercultural relationships and makes it much more likely that you will date and fall in love with someone of a different ethnicity, from a different culture or geographical region or who speaks a different language.
When approached with consciousness and consideration, intercultural relationships can bring together the richness and strengths that each individual brings from their culture. They can use their cultural differences as opportunities to more closely examine their own assumptions and beliefs and employ greater critical thought in their decisions about what aspects of their culture serve them and what doesn’t. Ideally, couples enjoy the broadening of their world, they may adopt worldviews and values that are new and freeing for them, their horizons widen, their beliefs and attitudes can become more informed, less rigid and judgmental, and their relationship can be a path to a more flexible and considered life.
Though the excitement of a fresh and unique encounter with someone distinctively different from us can be stimulating, engaging and exciting , as time goes on, just like every long term relationship, differences between the partners begin to surface. Just as Intercultural relationships offer some additional opportunities for growth and development they also face additional challenges that arise from each partner’s viewing their world and the relationship through their unique cultural lens.
Concerns commonly faced by intercultural couples can be seen in many areas:
- values, beliefs, attitudes, traditions
- language or linguistic challenges
- gender roles
- finances or money management
- family, in-laws, friends, social network
- social class, racism, discrimination
- spirituality or religion
- parenting, child rearing practice differences
- sexuality
- boundaries
The list can go on based on each couple’s unique circumstances.
Becoming more aware of our own and our partner’s cultural values and heritage can help us understand our differences and begin to integrate our separate cultural identities into an identity as a bi-cultural couple or family. In my work as a therapist, I help my clients explore their values and beliefs, so that they are aware of how their feelings, thoughts and behaviors are affected by their cultural background. When couples acknowledge the cultural differences in their relationship, they are able to see their interactions in cross cultural context and find ways to navigate them. I also help clients learn to appreciate their differences, and find ways to honor each person’s cultural practices. Each partner may continue to carry on traditions that are important for him or her, or make adjustments when those values no longer fit their current life. Neither partner needs to give up who he or she is in order to be in the relationship, the couple can reach compromises or find balances even when they hold opposing or conflicting values.
Working with a therapist or counselor with some expertise in the area of intercultural relationships and openness to seeing the value of such relationships can help couples to navigate this process. Overall the additional challenges and opportunities that intercultural relationships bring with them require a great deal of consciousness, compassion, self reflection and openness to be managed effectively but these relationships can be tremendously rewarding when we are committed to our partner, our relationship and our own growth.
Hayden Dover, MFT and Joy Tsai Yuan Hung, MFT are Marriage and Family Therapists in private practice in San Diego. They met during graduate school when both of them were studying psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies and they have been navigating their own intercultural relationship ever since. Joy and Hayden co-facilitate groups for couples in intercultural relationships. For more information you can visit www.psychotherapywithjoy.com or www.sandiego-mind-body-therapy.com .
Starting Romantic Relationships By Being Yourself
For Better Romantic Relationships, Be True To Yourself.
I am happy to have found this article, backed by research, on how important it is to be true to yourself in relationships. Dating advice such as “how to keep your man” or “how to win her heart” often offer tips focusing on doing certain things, behaving certain ways, or changing something about ourselves to please the potential date or romantic partner. The research found those who are true to themselves behave in more intimate and less destructive ways in relationships. Being true to themselves not only help them to have more fulfilled relationships, but they also seem to feel better overall.
In dating or romantic relationships, especially at the beginning when making an impression is the main concern, the natural tendency is to show the best sides of who we are. We are so caught up with trying to get the other person to like us, we forgo our true selves. Perhaps we do this by carrying on a conversation topic which we are not familiar with, agreeing to likes or dislikes that are not true to us, engaging in activities that we really do not enjoy…etc, the list goes on if we think about what people would do to date or stay in a relationship.
How do you be true to yourself? First by being honest about what you are looking for in a potential partner, and sticking to those qualities. I have heard so many clients talk about being in relationships with someone who is not what they have in mind as a partner, but it was easier to just go along with the person for different reasons: strong desire to not be alone, having the belief that we can change ourselves in order to be with the person, or that the person will change for us.
Secondly, know who you are and understand your feelings. If you have a solid sense of yourself and and you are true to yourself, you are less likely to want to change yourself to fit others. Going into a relationship acting like someone else would not create healthy relationships, because eventually you become resentful and your true self wants to and needs to come out.
Being true to yourself also means being genuine and authentic in relating to others. Learn to be open and honest by sharing thoughts, feelings, values, beliefs as the relationship progress, and when there are mutual gives and takes in the relationship. This helps create intimacy that is based on authentic interactions and the relationship is much more fulfilling.
If you would like to find out more about my practice, please visit: www.psychotherapywithjoy.com Joy Tsai Yuan Hung, MFT Psychotherapy office in San Diego Hillcrest.Communicate Effectively in Relationships
Having good communication skill is crucial in our interpersonal relationships: spouse, partner, employer, co-workers, employees, children, parents, friends, neighbors and so on, just about anyone you come across and have to interact with on a daily basis. Those who know the basics of communication skills are able to navigate relationships well and form healthy interactions with others.
What make up good communication skills? Effective communication starts with good listening. You may say “well, I know how to listen!” It sounds easy, but in reality it is hard to be a truly good listener.
Good listening means that you are not only paying attention, you are able to show interest, read the non-verbal cues, and understand the person’s experience at the moment (empathy). To truly understand other’s experience and being empathic means you can hold your own thoughts, opinions and judgments in check, and really try to understand the speaker’s feelings and thoughts at the moment.
When you speak, what you mean to say and what you actually say may not come across to the listener as you intended. How our words come across to the receivers are important especially in resolving differences. It is helpful to know our intentions or motives behind the message. Am I trying to be right no matter what? Am I doing it to win or to look good? Do I say things to avoid conflict? or to punish?
For most of us, it takes some practice to learn how to expressing ideas or thoughts to another person in ways that are gentle, non-blaming, assertive, clear without becoming aggressive or judgmental. Sometimes I role play with my clients on how to communicate effectively to get their feelings across and get their needs met. In therapy, I often encourage my clients to use the I – statements.
This sounds like a cliché, but it really works well. I – statements start from where I am, how I feel, what I think. When you say “I feel angry when you come home late” sounds much better to the receiver instead of “You are late again!”, “Why are you late?”, or “How can you do this to me?” I – statements reduce defensiveness from the receiver because you state how you feel, and you clearly express that it is the behavior which causes you distress rather than the person.
If you would like to find out more about my practice, please visit: www.psychotherapywithjoy.com Joy Tsai Yuan Hung, MFT Psychotherapy office in San Diego Hillcrest.Relationship Break Up – How to Mend the Broken Heart
Most of us have the experience of heart break at some point in our adolescent or adult life. This is unavoidable as we go through life looking for a life partner. Break ups are difficult and painful despite of how old or experienced we think we are. We might believe “ I will never get over this excruciating pain”, “I can never find love again”, or we might think “there’s no one else out there for me”.
What do you do when you just get out of a relationship and don’t feel that you can go on without your partner?
In my practice as a therapist, I see people who come in feeling depressed, angry, hopeless, lonely, exhausted, at a loss and in a lot of pain. The first thing that I do with my clients who are struggling with a recent break up is to help them acknowledge and understand that what they are feeling is normal when an important relationship ended. These feelings are not unlike what people go through when they grieve for the death of a loved one or other types of significant loss.
After providing some information and education about the process of grief, I also help my clients look at all the “goods” and the “not so goods” about this lost relationship. Exploring and allowing oneself to see all aspects of a relationship is important as we organize our thoughts and feelings about it. This helps people review the relationship, make sense of it and enables them to feel its completion. Furthermore, this is an important process to help my clients understand what is important for them when they are ready to move on to the next relationship.
Along the way, I also explore with my clients what resources they have, these can be from within ourselves or from outside supports. Self care is a concept that I cannot emphasize enough, especially when people are in emotional pain. When people are depressed, they tend to forget to eat or eat too much, neglect to take a shower, brush their teeth, forget to change into clean clothes, and stay in bed all day or not sleep at all. I encourage my clients to find things, or engage in activities, that are important for them: go to the gym, take a short walk, drink a cup of hot tea, take a hot bath, eat comfort food, talk to a friend, go to the beach, sit in the sun, watch children play…whatever gives a sense of calm and nourishment.
As they recover and feel better about themselves and the loss of relationship, I help my client prepare for life beyond breakup and look to the future. This could be many things, focusing on career, education, finding another relationship, devoting self in important causes. Or it can be more internal, as people become more aware of who they are or what they want, they may continue to invest in personal growth, to live more meaningfully and consciously, to form deeper connection with others. Relationship break up can be an opportunity for tremendous growth in self.
Wherever you are in the process of getting over a relationship, I encourage you to give yourself plenty of time, to learn more about yourself, to be comfortable being alone, to understand how you relate to others. When you have a good relationship with yourself, you are more prepared to be in an intimate relationship with another person.
If you would like to find out more about my practice, please visit: www.psychotherapywithjoy.com Joy Tsai Yuan Hung, MFT Psychotherapy office in San Diego Hillcrest.
