May is AAPI Heritage Month and also Maternal Mental Health month, and what better cross section to represent these things than our podcast! For this special month, we have the absolute pleasure and honor of interviewing Dr. Jenny T. Wang, PhD. Many of you may know of Dr. Jenny, but for those who do not, she is a Taiwanese American clinical psychologist speaker, and author on the intersections of Asian American identity, mental health, and intergenerational trauma.

We were able to talk to Dr. Jenny about her own experiences with her mental health during her postpartum periods, as well other topics on parenting and breaking generational cycles. In this episode, we also discuss:

• How to start doing the inner work to heal your inner child before one can break generational cycles
• What is the inner child?
• How to stop self-sacrificing 100% so you can balance valuing your children AND your hobbies, career, and other relationships
• How to preserve some of our AAPI cultural values while parenting in a way that feels better to us
• How to resist the "tiger mom" impulses to criticize and judge our children
• How to have the self-compassion and wisdom to prioritize our mental health as children of immigrants who did not have this modeled to us
• What we can be doing to help our AAPI youth in their mental health as according to CDC data from 2018–2022, "suicide was the leading cause of death among Asian Americans aged 15–24, and the second leading cause of death among Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders"

Dr. Jenny's answers are thought-provoking, profound, and wise, and we hope that you will enjoy this conversation as much as we found it healing too. This is one to bookmark to come back to over and over again!

Find more of Dr. Jenny Wang:

Instagram: @asiansformentalhealth
Website: www.jennywangphd.com
Book: Permission to Come Home: Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans

Dr. Jenny founded the Instagram community Asians for Mental Health (@asiansformentalhealth), spearheaded several mental health directories like Asians for Mental Health therapist directory, and wrote a best selling book in 2022 titled Permission to Come Home: Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans. Dr. Jenny is also an advisor on the mental health advocacy board of Wondermind, a mental health media company co-founded by Selena Gomez, Mandy Teefey, and Daniella Pierson. She is also an advisory member of the Mental Health Coalition created by Kenneth Cole and on the academic advisory board for the Asian American Foundation focusing on AAPI youth mental health. She has been seen on Good Morning America, New York Times, the Today Show, NBC, NPR, and more.

Resources:

• Asians for Mental Health Therapist Directory
• Beyond the Surface: Understanding Mental Health Among Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Youth (new 2024 research)
  
  

Note: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own. This podcast is not a replacement for therapy or profession

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