The model-minority myth is harmful to our mental health, particularly within immigrant communities. The myth promotes an idealized image of Asian Americans as universally successful, hardworking, and problem-free, which sets unrealistic standards and pressures individuals to conform to a narrow definition of success. I welcome Prachi Gupta to talk about the model-minority narrative and the impact it has on all of us and on the changes needed for future generations.

 

We discuss:

• How her personal family dynamics led her to investigate the impact of the model-minority myth
• The mental health struggles that come with pressure from parents
• Why we need to provide acceptance and love rather than pressure and perfectionism

 

To connect with Prachi Gupta follow her on Instagram @prachigu. For more resources visit the Prachi.co or purchase her debut memoir “They Called Us Exceptional” on Bookshop.org. Hardcover copies are available now or paperback is available for pre-order and out in stores Aug 20.

 

Our podcasts are also now on YouTube. If you prefer a video podcast with closed captioning, check us out there and subscribe to PedsDocTalk TV.

 

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on the PedsDocTalk Podcast Sponsorships page of the website.

00;00;00;02 – 00;00;25;03
Prachi Gupta
When we’re pressuring kids in that way, what we are teaching them is actually that our love is conditional. I don’t think that we, you know, parents might see it that way, but what that teaches children is that you get rewarded and you get my affection when you perform, and I pull it away from you when you don’t perform in this way, that makes me work good.

00;00;25;06 – 00;00;42;15
Prachi Gupta
And what we’re teaching kids when we do that is that their self-worth comes from their performance. And when we when those kids become adults, they don’t have the ability to understand that they have worth and they matter just for who they are.

00;00;42;17 – 00;01;03;18
Dr. Mona
Hello and welcome back to the show. I am Doctor Mona and I hope that you are having an amazing week. I don’t know about you, but I am still on an Olympic high. If you have been following me on Instagram, it’s all I could think about and we’ll talk about online as well. And every Olympics come and go and I always say, oh no, I won’t get consumed.

00;01;03;18 – 00;01;29;05
Dr. Mona
This includes summer and Winter Olympics and somehow I’m glued to my TV watching sports I never have even heard of, like steeplechase. I kept wondering where the horses were. I really love these games, and I think it’s because the last Olympics in Tokyo, the pandemic dimmed its light and this time we saw amazing close finishes, crowded stadiums, built that energy even from far away.

00;01;29;05 – 00;01;49;17
Dr. Mona
And as you many of you know, my husband was there as a spectator. So I got to hear his text messages and get his videos and photos. And it just was so exciting to see that energy. And then we also saw women athletes equal to male athletes in terms of number of competitors. And 26 out of the 40 gold medals of the United States were women.

00;01;49;17 – 00;02;12;24
Dr. Mona
The power of women in sport, the sportsmanship. I talked about this on my social, but I didn’t even consider watching the Olympics with my children. There are four and a half years old and 14 months is screen time because it was empowering. It was engaging, it was motivating. It was a form of coaching. My daughter clapped more, said wow, said yay, give high fives like learned how to give high fives.

00;02;12;24 – 00;02;41;19
Dr. Mona
Because of the excitement of coaching the Olympics, it was so amazing. My son was enthralled by men’s gymnastics and basketball, saying that when he gets bigger, he cannot wait to do that. And my daughter watched rhythmic gymnastics and started throwing her ball around like them. It was so amazing to see and I loved that we saw incredible examples of athletes hugging after competing, congratulating each other in loss in wins, bowing down on podiums to each other.

00;02;41;19 – 00;03;05;20
Dr. Mona
You could just feel the hard work, but also feel the dedication, the love, the positive energy and it was just something I think the world really needed and I cannot wait for 2028. You know, this energy was contagious. I am so excited about the Paralympic Games coming in two weeks from the time of this recording, and also the next Summer Olympics in my hometown of Los Angeles.

00;03;05;20 – 00;03;29;08
Dr. Mona
Who wants to do a PTT meetup in 2028? I am just so excited and motivated and also just motivated to continue spreading positive energy and positive vibes in the parenting space because we need it. This this example here with the Olympics is why I do what I do. I want to spread love, positivity, uplifting messages so that we can continue to parent in that way too.

00;03;29;10 – 00;03;49;12
Dr. Mona
Well, listen, our podcast continues to grow and if you didn’t know, we now have our conversations on YouTube. If you prefer to watch me and my guest chat versus listen, you can also turn on the closed captioning. Make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and comment, leave reviews and share share, share this podcast reviews and sharing is how the podcast continues to grow.

00;03;49;15 – 00;04;13;06
Dr. Mona
Now let’s get into today’s episode. My guest today is an award winning journalist and bestselling author of the incredible book. They called us exceptional and the other lies that raised us. Her name is Prachi Gupta. My husband and I both discovered her book and my husband being the avid reader, he is read it in two days and told me after that I had to have brought Chai on my show and read her book.

00;04;13;06 – 00;04;51;12
Dr. Mona
And wow, what an incredible book and perspective on the harm of the model minority myth. The incredible thing is that you do not have to be a model minority or an Asian-American, or a product of the model minority myth. To resonate with this episode, we discussed the harm that parenting with values placed on extrinsic motivation. What other people think of you, and people pleasing and success viewed as status or things like that can cause when we put too much pressure on outcomes and not the process and societal definitions of success, our children can grow up with a lack of sense of self and anxiety to perform, which is what we commonly see in grown adults

00;04;51;12 – 00;05;13;12
Dr. Mona
who are raised in this sort of environment. And honestly, this was me and my husband. We are grateful for our immigrant parents, but we also were raised with this pressure to succeed and perform and meet check boxes. And it meant a loss of self. And we want a healthy balance for our kids. Let’s get into the conversation. Thank you so much for joining me today, Prachi.

00;05;13;14 – 00;05;14;28
Prachi Gupta
Thanks so much for having me.

00;05;15;00 – 00;05;35;06
Dr. Mona
Well, I relate to this topic already so much. I have to say, you were highly requested by someone really important in my life, which was my husband. He is a model minority child as well. Indian American. He read your book. They called this exceptional and other Lives that raised us in about two days because he binge read it because it’s that good.

00;05;35;12 – 00;05;44;25
Dr. Mona
And he’s like, you need to have her on the show and it’s on my list to read next. Thank you so much. What? You know, tell us more about yourself. And what inspired you to write this book?

00;05;44;27 – 00;06;11;29
Prachi Gupta
Yeah. So I, I’m a journalist, but I never wanted to write about myself. I like reporting, I like writing about other people. But in 2017, my brother Yash died, and at the age of 29. And, I’m not really going to go into, like, the details of his death or what happened, but I will say that we had been estranged for about two years at the time.

00;06;11;29 – 00;06;45;10
Prachi Gupta
So in addition to dealing with the shock of his death, I was also trying to piece together who he had become in the time that we’d been estranged and how how he died, how this happened and really what I, as his sister, could have done to prevent this outcome, to have saved him or how, you know, have intervened and why that intervention was really felt impossible and like how far back that we had had to go in order to change things from going down this path.

00;06;45;12 – 00;07;18;15
Prachi Gupta
And that sent me down this, this investigation where I, that, that and that resulted in the essay that you mentioned, stories about my brother. And this essay was an exploration into masculinity and mental health and the intersection of race and gender and those issues, the way that being a brown man, and specifically an Indian American man in America had, he dealt with all of these pressures, these psychological pressures, these social pressures to conform to certain expectations.

00;07;18;21 – 00;07;40;11
Prachi Gupta
And he was struggling with it largely alone. And as his sister, I, I didn’t really see or understand that until after he died. And that also was what created a wedge in our relationship, because I was struggling with my own set of pressures as an Indian American woman, and we weren’t able to have a dialog about those things with each other.

00;07;40;11 – 00;08;09;11
Prachi Gupta
And that is really what created the rift between us. That led to our estrangement, where I had started to identify as a feminist and he had started to identify with men’s rights views, and so that exploration stories about my brother, I was really afraid to publish this essay. But in doing so, I mean, I was overwhelmed by the response I heard from moms around the country who said so?

00;08;09;11 – 00;08;29;24
Prachi Gupta
Immigrant moms who said they had no idea that their kids could be struggling with their mental health, and they were going to now start talking about mental health in their households. I heard from men who said, I’ve never been able to admit this, but I think that I’m living with depression and your essay has convinced me to seek help.

00;08;29;27 – 00;08;51;20
Prachi Gupta
I heard from siblings, a lot of sisters who said, I’ve seen this change in my brother, and I don’t understand who he is anymore. And your help? Your essay helped me understand him better and where and how to talk to him, and gave me compassion for what he might be going through. So when I realized that, you know, I thought that my family was the only one.

00;08;51;22 – 00;09;11;03
Prachi Gupta
And when I heard these responses, I realized that there were families all across the country, in the world dealing with these issues, thinking that they were alone, too. And that’s when I knew that I had to write my full story and and tell everything, go into my full story in the form of a memoir, even though I didn’t really want to write about myself.

00;09;11;03 – 00;09;21;21
Prachi Gupta
But I realized that I had to in order because I knew the story was going to help so many people make sense of the chaos in their own lives.

00;09;21;23 – 00;09;37;14
Dr. Mona
Thank you so much. I you know, for anyone listening, I’m actually getting teary eyed. You know, this is also going to go on YouTube as well, so you can see me getting emotional, but, hearing how powerful you are as a writer, you know, and I know you said that you were writing and then you, you pivoted to actually doing a memoir and getting more personal.

00;09;37;16 – 00;10;01;13
Dr. Mona
I know how hard that must have been, but thank you. Because, like you just said, you have changed the lives of so many people who, you know, I talk about mental health a lot on this podcast. Even though I do parenting, I strongly believe that we need to talk about parental mental health and the mental health of us as adults who may end up having children, because if we don’t take care of ourselves and understand the why behind why we might be feeling this way, we we can’t do anything for our children.

00;10;01;13 – 00;10;18;25
Dr. Mona
And so for me, it’s very powerful. I think storytelling is extremely powerful. Like you have just said, people around the world are approaching you saying how much this resonated with you. And I already mentioned my husband as well, struggled with his own mental health. And for so long didn’t know how to get help. And finally he has.

00;10;18;25 – 00;10;42;22
Dr. Mona
And it’s changed his life, our life, our children’s life. And so first and foremost, thank you for that. Thank you for taking that pain. You know, that we you went through that what what happened. And, you know, estrangement itself is its own episode and own story. You know, we could talk about and taking that story and really turning it into, I think what you’re doing here is purpose to really impact so many people.

00;10;42;24 – 00;11;01;22
Dr. Mona
And so thank you. I personally also am estranged from my sister at the time of this recording. And, it’s emotional when you say that because I also think about what if something happens to her and I never got to talk to her about that. And that’s really hard to hear. And I’m so sorry that you lost your brother.

00;11;01;25 – 00;11;16;16
Dr. Mona
I’m sorry that the strange event happened. You know, obviously, there’s so many things that could have led up to that that we don’t need to go into. But I get emotional talking about that because I feel that so deeply. And, you know, that feeling of what could I have done? What can we do to fix this relationship?

00;11;16;16 – 00;11;39;09
Dr. Mona
Where did it go wrong? And then to not be able to have that closure with your brother? So thank you again for for being so vulnerable and sharing that I know we’re talking about obviously more about this whole concept of the model minority. And a lot of my listeners may not know what that is. So what is the model minority and the traditional notion of success that has been weaved into this narrative?

00;11;39;11 – 00;11;50;02
Dr. Mona
And why has this been harmful for anyone who may not be familiar, I know, but a lot of my listeners may not know. Now let’s take a break to hear from our sponsors.

00;11;50;04 – 00;12;19;29
Prachi Gupta
Sure. Yeah. So the model minority myth is a racial stereotype that originated in the 1960s, specifically with the heart Stellar Immigration Act, Nationality Act of 1965. So before this act, Asians were largely barred from entry into the United States. This was actually also the case in Canada. And there was at first an all all out ban, and then there was quotas.

00;12;20;05 – 00;12;49;07
Prachi Gupta
So people, you know, very few people were allowed. And that changed in the civil rights era in 1965 with this new immigration law. And what that allowed was suddenly an influx of people from Asia and their entry into the United States was predicated upon their skill set, you know, their education levels, their family ties. So it was really bringing in a very specific class of people, upwardly mobile.

00;12;49;09 – 00;13;17;13
Prachi Gupta
And when this large influx of Asians came into the country, the story that was woven around them was, oh, look at how successful they are. Like, if you’re Asian, you’re innately hardworking, you’re good at science, math. And I think many of us, even if we’re not familiar with the model minority stereotype terminology, are familiar with the stereotype itself with these, characters sticks that are attributed to a lot of Asian Americans.

00;13;17;15 – 00;13;37;10
Prachi Gupta
And, you know, part of that was also like, you have tight knit families, stable families. You’re problem free. You don’t complain. And the there are a couple of things that are really harmful about this stereotype. One is that it was used at the time and continues to be used today to drive a wedge between other communities of color.

00;13;37;15 – 00;13;58;20
Prachi Gupta
So, you know, it was really used to temper the civil rights movement and say, well, look, if these, you know, quote unquote, Asians can be so successful to black America, well, why can’t you lift yourself up by the bootstraps? And you enabled this idea, this myth of America as a meritocracy, where anyone can achieve the American dream simply through hard work.

00;13;58;22 – 00;14;22;21
Prachi Gupta
And so it and it persists today. I mean, that’s how affirmative action was. Got it on the back of the model minority myth. So it has serious implications politically and socially. And it’s used to uphold, higher, power hierarchy in this country. And we have some more awareness about that. Now, I think in recent years there’s been more conversation about that.

00;14;22;24 – 00;14;44;26
Prachi Gupta
But one thing that we still don’t really talk a lot of, about is the personal and social and mental impacts of this myth. So, you know, I come from a family that we didn’t have the terminology for model minority, but we felt the pressures of every single day. And as my grandparents and parents, we came into this country, they’re all they’re actually all immigrants.

00;14;44;28 – 00;15;04;04
Prachi Gupta
And so for them, it was a survival strategy. It was you have to, you know, where do you belong in this country? Oh, this is this is the only way I can belong. And this is the safest way, because if you don’t adhere to these norms, then suddenly you risk alienating and isolation and, you know, being ostracized, violence.

00;15;04;09 – 00;15;31;17
Prachi Gupta
So it was really out of survival to that day, you know, to assimilate. And so I grew up very much in the confines of this myth, with these expectations of, this is who I must be. You know, when one of the things I explore in my book is that it has tremendous psychological impacts, because when we are forcing ourselves to conform to this idea of perfection, this abstract idea that can actually never fully be achieved.

00;15;31;19 – 00;15;56;07
Prachi Gupta
Yeah, we are learning how to suppress everything that doesn’t fit, that we’re breaking ourselves to fit into a mold, and we orient ourselves towards external validation rather than our internal sense of peace. So we actually lose over time the ability to be vulnerable, to create intimacy with the people we love, to, be connected to our authentic selves.

00;15;56;13 – 00;16;20;17
Prachi Gupta
We learn how to disconnect from ourselves, which is, you know, which is what causes or leads to so many mental health problems. Because I view mental health as inherently, a connection, an ability to be connected to yourself and the world around you. And so we live in a world that seeks to disconnect us from ourselves, and we’re orienting ourselves towards that when we buy into the model minority myth.

00;16;20;19 – 00;16;42;11
Prachi Gupta
And so I wanted to write this book to help people see how these structures work, see how they affect us as individuals. And then maybe then that can motivate people to make changes in their lives and help really dismantle this myth that’s so damaging, not just at a at a personal level, at a societal and structural and collective level as well.

00;16;42;18 – 00;17;00;12
Dr. Mona
I absolutely agree. I mean, the you mentioned it perfectly, the external validation, the lack of being able to be vulnerable, lack of being authentic self. No wonder you mentioned that it can lead to mental health struggles because you’re basically fighting a constant battle between yourself, what you want, and what you’re being expected of. And so.

00;17;00;12 – 00;17;01;04
Prachi Gupta
Okay.

00;17;01;06 – 00;17;22;22
Dr. Mona
Thank you. So, so saying that so beautifully because I don’t think people understand that. Yeah. When you are when the history behind it and when your parents are coming to this country with the expectation that performance is how you need to survive, and then as a child of that environment, like, I know you can probably relate to this as me, as myself, everything was performance based, right?

00;17;22;22 – 00;17;42;07
Dr. Mona
The external validation, like you mentioned, how are you doing grades. We joke about that like we joke about it so much about, oh yeah, I, I got an A-minus or I got a B+ and my, my parent whooped me. But we don’t really, truly get how that impacts a child. And as they grow up, how it impacts their selves and their mental health.

00;17;42;07 – 00;18;00;23
Dr. Mona
And I felt it. My husband felt it. We both suffer from anxiety and depression because of this model minority myth, I will say, because we didn’t have space to be vulnerable. We didn’t have space to feel sad. It was always like like you said, you got to be happy. You got to toe the company line. You can’t step out of line.

00;18;00;26 – 00;18;18;04
Dr. Mona
You got to be obedient. And you know, I have a parenting podcast and we know that obedience is not all is not the goal, right? Children are going to test boundaries. They’re going to have their opinions. But from a model minority standpoint, oh no, you can’t you can’t speak up for what you believe in. You have to be problem free like you mentioned.

00;18;18;07 – 00;18;31;24
Dr. Mona
What other ways do you see this kind of showing up in maybe even personally, or what you’ve seen in terms of like shame and isolation? Like, have you seen that, you know, that this kind of create this narrative of like feelings of shame and isolation for many people?

00;18;31;27 – 00;19;02;29
Prachi Gupta
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Because what it does is when you learn, when you learn to suppress, like when you’re oriented towards external validation and performance, you see, you adopt a set of ideas of like, what’s good is everything that helps you achieve or get to the next level, which are markers set not by you or people even necessarily that you care about or set by, expectations in society that’s really oriented towards labor, your ability to be productive and produce capital in the world.

00;19;03;03 – 00;19;33;00
Prachi Gupta
So it’s not about your well-being, it’s not about, you know, how kind you are. It’s not about how you treat other people. It’s about how much you can get. It’s very transactional based. And so what that does is you learn how to hide everything else, and you become ashamed of those things because when you’re hiding something, you’re hiding it because you think it’s bad and it associates all of these negative feelings with.

00;19;33;00 – 00;19;58;09
Prachi Gupta
These are totally natural emotions like you mentioned. Like our emotions exist for a reason. They are there to tell us something. And when we learn to suppress everything, that’s negative one. We don’t know how to deal with it. So we when we feel an overwhelming emotion of sadness or anger or fear, instead of acknowledging it and learning how to processes emotions, we we bury them and we feel shame with them.

00;19;58;15 – 00;20;34;12
Prachi Gupta
And then they erupt in ways that we don’t understand and then cause chaos in our lives. And then we get even tighter on the suppression. And then again, the cycle continues and it and it explodes. And that’s certainly, you know, what happened in my family, with, with all of us in various ways. So, yeah, I mean, it breeds shame and isolation because the thing that creates connection is the ability to share our fears are all of these scary bits of ourselves and see that we’re not alone in them and see that other people go through the same exact things.

00;20;34;18 – 00;20;54;17
Prachi Gupta
And if we were able to talk about it in a way that’s compassionate and judgmental, then we could feel connected instead of alone. But when you’re so focused on suppressing that because you think that it’s not allowed or it’s not safe, you are sitting in isolation and shame and not realizing that you’re actually not alone in this.

00;20;54;17 – 00;21;12;01
Dr. Mona
Yeah, absolutely. There’s such a there’s such an isolation and this feeling. And I love that you’re on the show because I think so many people, whether they grew up in the model minority experience or not, that the sort of external validation raising right, the end goal, what is it that you’re doing for other people? And you said it perfectly.

00;21;12;05 – 00;21;31;07
Dr. Mona
A lot of this is who creates these rules, right? It’s society. But who who decides what is success? Right. I’m an entrepreneur as an example. And so I’m feeling it extra as an entrepreneur now, because now I’m having to do something out of our comfort zone, which was, you know, you go to medical school, you go to law school, you go to business school.

00;21;31;07 – 00;21;50;00
Dr. Mona
All those things that you are guaranteed an outcome, right? The secure feels and you’re like, oh yeah, you study, you become a doctor. And now I’m in this very uncomfortable life of entrepreneurship that I struggle with the external validation heavily. Right. Because with entrepreneurship you don’t know what’s going to happen, what opportunities are going to come your way?

00;21;50;00 – 00;22;16;29
Dr. Mona
Are you going to be quote unquote, successful in the way that you were raised in? Right, like the the metrics and the grades and the. Well, how much did you get paid? What did they say? I mean, all of that feeds on you and can leave you in isolation and shame. I have a lot of parents who listen to the show, and I think what you’re saying really resonates again, not just if you are an Asian American, but again, that if you grew up in that culture of external validation, you said it so beautifully.

00;22;17;02 – 00;22;24;27
Dr. Mona
How have you undone this narrative for yourself? And when did you start to realize that this needed to be undone in your whole journey?

00;22;25;01 – 00;22;45;13
Prachi Gupta
Yeah, I mean, I, I think it’s constant work. I’ll probably spend the rest of my life, you know, trying to undo it, because it is so deeply ingrained in me. But I also started to reject it at a pretty young age. You know, growing up, I was in many ways, I did fit the mold. I love school, I was very good at school.

00;22;45;13 – 00;23;04;12
Prachi Gupta
I was a great student, but I was always artistic. I always wanted to be a writer and a painter. I’m an athlete. I was, I ran cross-country in high school and college, and those were my passions. Those were the things that I wanted to do more than anything in the world. You know, in my household, they were supported to a point.

00;23;04;12 – 00;23;27;11
Prachi Gupta
They were supported as hobbies. But then when it got time to get serious, you know, suddenly that was none of that was okay. I had to go into finance or law essentially. I, you know, I did I, I went down that path, because it was important to me to try to I wanted to fit in with my family.

00;23;27;11 – 00;23;51;28
Prachi Gupta
I wanted to make my parents happy. I, I did that the way so many people do. And so I went down that path. And I, after college, I graduated, I went straight into a management consulting firm. I was engaged to a doctor. I was living that like that life to a tee. And I thought though, that if I did that, if I followed all these rules.

00;23;52;00 – 00;24;13;18
Prachi Gupta
The unspoken part of this is that if you follow these rules, we’re going to have stability and happiness and we’re going to we’re going to be, you know, guarding ourselves from all the sort of problems that, you know, everyone else deals with. And we’re suddenly we’re immune to these because we have done all the things that are supposed to make us stable and successful and happy.

00;24;13;20 – 00;24;44;27
Prachi Gupta
And so that’s what I believed at the time. But that’s when I started to see that even though I’d accomplished these things, I was miserable. My relationship was not fulfilling at all. I was miserable at work. All of my coworkers were also miserable. Yeah. And and in my family, I don’t want to get into too many of the details here, but basically, my family was falling apart and I thought that, you know, like, my brother was so successful.

00;24;44;29 – 00;25;08;09
Prachi Gupta
He was in college. He was, in internet space X, Elon Musk’s company, and then he actually got a job offer at the end of that summer, and he was one of the few interns to do so. And he turned it down because that was the same summer where he had a psychotic break and he attempted suicide. And what led him down?

00;25;08;11 – 00;25;29;11
Prachi Gupta
The depression? I mean, the fact that he got so serious down that path was terrifying to me. Not just because I almost lost the person that I love the most, but because as his sister, he felt like he couldn’t tell me. And I saw how he used how everyone around him to use his success as a way to gauge his his wellness.

00;25;29;16 – 00;25;53;29
Prachi Gupta
Yeah. And then how he used it as a way to hide his own wellness. And that shook me to my core. And I started questioning what we were getting up to to achieve this status. And these images and how maybe if my brother had received a message that, you know, yeah, you’re brilliant, but you don’t have to do all of these things to prove your worth.

00;25;53;29 – 00;26;13;05
Prachi Gupta
You can do whatever you want to do, and you don’t have to go down this path. If maybe if we had sent him that message, he wouldn’t have tried. You know, he wouldn’t have gone so far down and and pushed himself to a point of literally breaking himself. And so that’s really when I started to question the impact all of this was having.

00;26;13;05 – 00;26;39;06
Prachi Gupta
And, and I had, I had luckily, I’d never quite fit into the mold. So my interest helped me see things from a different perspective. Whereas everyone else in my family was naturally talented at that, at this thing, that society really rewards for, which is which is your, you know, your intellect in the way that you, you know, my brother was just so happened to be born brilliantly like use a brilliant engineer.

00;26;39;09 – 00;26;52;02
Prachi Gupta
And maybe, you know, I think that in a way was a handicap to him because it didn’t let him separate the expectations placed upon him from his authentic self and to see what he really wanted for himself.

00;26;52;04 – 00;27;11;01
Dr. Mona
I absolutely I, I’m thank you so much for sharing that. And yeah, I think anyone who’s listening to this that’s also in other careers like health care, you know, health care is another example. Like you said, everyone’s miserable in health care right now. And I’m not saying we all I’m not saying everyone who went into it went into it because of that expectation that that’s what they had to do.

00;27;11;01 – 00;27;34;02
Dr. Mona
If some of us really did go into it because we wanted to help. But you’re right, we are struggling in these fields that you think that, okay, if I do X, Y, and Z, I will get the accolades. I will get love from, you know, checking those check boxes. I often talk to that with my husband. And thank you for sharing that story about you did all that sort of things that you thought would lead you to that model minority expectation.

00;27;34;02 – 00;27;52;19
Dr. Mona
Right? You were engaged to a physician. You weren’t miserable, though, like you did all the things that you thought, but you were miserable. And so when you started to realize this, did you start to did you do therapy, writing? Like what helped you actually finally say and say, you know what? I’m I’m done. I’m getting out of this.

00;27;52;19 – 00;28;05;18
Dr. Mona
I need to read that. What what was that final like? Final? Do I know you say it’s a lifelong process, but where do you think you know? What do you think really helped you get to that point? Now let’s take a break to hear from our sponsors.

00;28;05;20 – 00;28;24;27
Prachi Gupta
Well, there were a couple of things. One, I will say that like, it’s not like I started questioning the system first. That was the last thing that I questioned. First, I questioned myself. I thought that I had failed somehow because we are taught this message. We were indoctrinated with it at a very young age. And it’s not just, like you said, Asian American families.

00;28;24;27 – 00;28;51;00
Prachi Gupta
It’s this whole country of we are, you know, the idea of the American dream is drilled into all of us, and we believe that if we achieve it, suddenly we’re going to have, you know, it’s it’s the solution to everything. And it’s not, unfortunately. And so I felt like this sense of failure that like I had failed to be happy with a life that most people would, you know, would, would feel so lucky to have.

00;28;51;01 – 00;29;18;02
Prachi Gupta
So, so I didn’t question things at first, but what happened was essentially, you know, I had tried to do things, the way that I knew my family wanted and things just got so and I detailed this in a book about how just basically things in my family felt like they had hit rock bottom. And I realized that if I stayed in the life that I was currently in, I was going to go in that same direction.

00;29;18;02 – 00;29;39;17
Prachi Gupta
So to me, it felt like an existential, not just an existential threat, but like a real, like almost life and death situation where I didn’t know if I was going to survive this. And so I got to a point where I was like, something in my life has to change. I can’t control my brother or my dad or my mom or my partner.

00;29;39;19 – 00;30;02;06
Prachi Gupta
I can control my life and I need to make some serious changes. And I see it. I had I had, you know, I was waking up, like dreading to go into work, like completely numb, disconnected from everything, just like. And then I would like sometimes like cry before I go into the office, like I just so every day was a struggle and I couldn’t do it anymore.

00;30;02;06 – 00;30;21;24
Prachi Gupta
And I said, you know, there was one thing in life that I knew that made me really happy, that filled me with a sense of purpose, and that was writing. And I’ve known that about myself since I was a kid. But I what I didn’t know anymore was, you know, I’d spent so many years suppressing that desire and that creativity.

00;30;21;27 – 00;30;48;08
Prachi Gupta
I didn’t even know how to get in touch with that part of myself anymore. But I but I felt deeply that something in my survival depended on it. So I quit my job and I said, you know, there are people out there in the world right now who get paid to write. And I had enough, you know, like success throughout college, I guess, like to know that I have some ability as a writer.

00;30;48;08 – 00;31;08;13
Prachi Gupta
Yeah. So it was not like it was. It was still a pipe dream, but it was like a calculated risk of like, okay, I’m going to quit this job. I’m going to give an honest effort and really try to become a writer. And by that I just mean getting paid to put words on paper. If it’s as a copywriter, that’s fine.

00;31;08;13 – 00;31;30;28
Prachi Gupta
Like that would be amazing. I just want to work with words. And so I quit my job. I didn’t really have a plan. Aside from that, I essentially gave myself two years. I said, okay, a lot of people go to graduate school for journalism, and what do they get out of a journalism degree? They get a network, they get some things published and they can get an internship.

00;31;31;05 – 00;31;51;23
Prachi Gupta
So I was living in New York City at the time. I decided that I’m going to live off of my savings for two years at the time of a graduate program, and those are going to be my three goals. I’m going to give myself two years to accomplish those three things. And if by the end of those two years, I’m not able to do that, then I will say, okay, you know what?

00;31;51;23 – 00;32;16;15
Prachi Gupta
I gave it a fair shot. I don’t have any regrets. And then and then I’ll go back to something else. But, you know, the most amazing things happened. And a year later, I had an internship at Gawker. And then I was hired from there by another website where I was suddenly a journalist. And so I saw that this gamble on myself had paid off, and that gave me so much confidence to keep going down this path.

00;32;16;15 – 00;32;34;26
Prachi Gupta
And what I didn’t realize then is what we’re putting a job like, to me, was not just about a job, it was about this idea of who I am and who I have to be in the world. And once I saw that, you know, once I left the job, I was like, I’m never going back to that version of me.

00;32;34;28 – 00;32;59;19
Prachi Gupta
I can’t do it. And so I continued to make decisions that were, you know, that were breaking that mold. Like I ended up breaking up with that, my fiancé just six months after the after I, you know, so I got into journalism and then probably about a year after that, we broke up and then I was and then basically I just, you know, blew up my whole life and I didn’t know what I was walking towards exactly, but I knew I would.

00;32;59;19 – 00;33;12;27
Prachi Gupta
I was walking away from I knew that I was walking whatever I was walking towards, I could do so in a way that was more and more aligned with who I am, and I didn’t know who that was yet, but I knew I was getting closer and closer to figuring that out.

00;33;12;29 – 00;33;36;09
Dr. Mona
I love that story. I’m so happy you took a chance on yourself, and it really is. You’re doing great work. And like I said, taking the passion that you knew you always had as a child. I’m very similar. I always love to write, but I always love to create videos and do skits and act. And I get to do that now and it feels great, and I’m just so thankful for you and your conversation that we’re having today and the book that you have created.

00;33;36;12 – 00;33;50;03
Dr. Mona
What do you hope that you can change for future generations? You know, those of us raised in this culture, but wanting to pivot and change. Maybe if you have children or not, but also just change for ourselves. What would be your dream for our listeners today?

00;33;50;05 – 00;34;21;02
Prachi Gupta
Yeah. Well, so one of the reasons why I wrote this book and why it felt so urgent to write this book, is that what I see now in our country is that we have now several generations, immigrants and children of immigrants who have grown up on this idea, this myth. And what I’m seeing in the world today is that rather than breaking the cycle, we are passing this down to the next generation and actually adding to the pressures, increasing the pressures.

00;34;21;10 – 00;34;46;11
Prachi Gupta
You can see it with the rise of political candidates who are, using their identities, like the diagram of Swami and Hailey, using their identities to deny civil rights, to take away rights for people. We see it in the way affirmative action was gutted. We see it in, you know, we see it in the UK. We’re seeing it everywhere.

00;34;46;11 – 00;35;16;14
Prachi Gupta
And it’s becoming and it’s and and we also have a mental health epidemic for young Asian-Americans in this country. Young Asian-American adults are the only ethnic group whose leading cause of death is suicide. Yet our communities are the least likely ethnic communities to seek help for mental health. And so I felt that there was this urgency to share this message and the story.

00;35;16;17 – 00;35;42;14
Prachi Gupta
And it’s very hard to talk about these issues. Yeah, but by using a personal story that people can see themselves in, they it’s a very non-confrontational way to begin to examine yourself and your life and your decisions and have conversations within your family about intergenerational trauma, about mental health, about estrangement that most people, you know, it’s really hard thing to talk about.

00;35;42;14 – 00;36;05;13
Prachi Gupta
But using a book, using somebody else’s story and these experiences, I found, has given a lot of people language and vocabulary for which to talk about these things and to talk about them in nonjudgmental ways that create empathy and connection and are really helping families across the country dismantle some of these ideas and, and think differently.

00;36;05;15 – 00;36;27;29
Dr. Mona
Oh, thank you so much. And I love chatting with you. I love being able to connect about this again, not only from the model minority perspective, but also just the values you’re talking about in terms of the external validation, the things that we are doing that I also agree we’re we’re passing down not only politically like you mentioned, but a lot of us are not undoing it, even if we think we are.

00;36;27;29 – 00;36;47;13
Dr. Mona
I give the example and I’m going to just use this example, not the probably not the best one, but my generation is so fixated on children doing come on. So I know, you know, a human is I don’t know. But for listeners, come on, is this sort of academe activity thing to basically hone in on math and, you know, science and like academic skills.

00;36;47;20 – 00;37;05;24
Dr. Mona
And from a young age, my generation, my peers are pressuring their children to do come on. I’m not saying like, oh, they want to do it. They are literally pressuring them on a Saturday to finish their come on threats. If they do not finish their come on. And I’m like, we are doing what our parents did to us, that you are putting pressure on academics.

00;37;05;28 – 00;37;22;05
Dr. Mona
I get it that we want our children to have basics in math science. I’m not saying that that’s not important, but we are also causing anxiety from a young age by not allowing our children to play or at a young age, putting them pressure on. Yeah, now you need to finish this. If you don’t finish this, you’re not getting your dinner.

00;37;22;06 – 00;37;43;26
Dr. Mona
If you don’t finish this, you’re not doing this threat Yelling. I’m like, is that what we want? Are we trying to create another generation of this model minority that you think that happiness is finishing? Come on, success is finishing. Come on. An example I give just because I see it so much and I’m like, no, you can have academic success.

00;37;43;26 – 00;38;05;26
Dr. Mona
You can have all of this happen, but you don’t have to put this pressure on. And is that what the end goal is? Do we want our children to be stressed and getting A’s and all of that, or do we want them to do okay in school? Well, in school we supported in school, but also, like you said, have attunement to who they are, what their needs are, their mental health.

00;38;05;26 – 00;38;16;10
Dr. Mona
And I think we do a huge disservice. What I see in my generation, being Indian American, right now and the peers, I’m like, everyone just stop with stop at the Kumon pressure, please.

00;38;16;12 – 00;38;30;29
Prachi Gupta
Yeah, I think there’s one other thing I would add to that, which is part of the message in my book too, which is that when we are pressuring so when we’re pressuring kids in that way, what we are teaching them is actually that our love is conditional.

00;38;31;02 – 00;38;31;20
Dr. Mona

00;38;31;22 – 00;38;58;17
Prachi Gupta
I don’t think that we, you know, parents might see it that way, but what that teaches children is that you get rewarded and you get my affection when you perform. Yes. And I pull it away from you when you don’t perform in this way. That makes me work. Good. And what we’re teaching kids when we do that is that their self-worth comes from their performance.

00;38;58;19 – 00;39;26;19
Prachi Gupta
And when we when those kids become adults, they don’t have the ability to understand that they have worth and they matter just for who they are. And then they enter a world in which society, their corporate jobs, tell them the same exact thing, that they don’t matter unless they can come in and do x, Y, and z tasks for this, you know, for their boss, or they don’t get a job unless they have X, y, z on their resume.

00;39;26;22 – 00;39;59;19
Prachi Gupta
And so this message is reinforced. And really, our family systems are the only place or the fundamental place where we can learn unconditional love and what it really means to have that. And without that base, we don’t we feel lost. Yeah. And we’re fearful. And that is really that that conditional love is really what causes so much. So much of it is just a foundational problem, I believe, because if you don’t believe that you have an inherent sense of self-worth, you’re constantly looking at it from other places.

00;39;59;21 – 00;40;25;29
Prachi Gupta
And that creates so much trauma and pain in the world. So really, it’s not just about like it’s not just about like some added stress or even anxiety to me. It’s about like it’s about like something core about, you know, being human and being able to, you know, if I had had that ability and if, you know, my parents were robbed of that, too, you they didn’t have that ability either.

00;40;26;02 – 00;40;53;22
Prachi Gupta
But this is the this is the product of intergenerational trauma. And when we have that ability to regulate and to know that we matter as people, regardless of what’s around us, that’s what real liberation looks like. And that’s what I think really, you know, solves a lot of the trauma in the world. And, and, and playfulness, this, this idea that like play as children is frivolous or, you know, I actually think it’s one of the most important things.

00;40;53;22 – 00;41;23;15
Prachi Gupta
Obviously, I’m not a parent, but I find as an adult like that everything that, we can’t create a better world if we can’t imagine a better world. And that capacity for imagination that comes so naturally to children is something that as adults we are hardened, you know, and are torn away from. And I’m constantly trying to get back in touch with that sense of playfulness, that sense of imagination, that just comes so naturally to kids.

00;41;23;20 – 00;41;48;26
Prachi Gupta
So I, I believe that it’s one of the most precious and special things in the world, and I’m constantly try to trying to cultivate that in my own life. So I think, like as a parent, if I were a parent, that’s something that I would really want to encourage in my children and like and like let them explore, because that’s, that’s their uniqueness, that’s their individuality, and that’s going to be like the source of all their gifts to the world as well.

00;41;48;28 – 00;42;10;11
Dr. Mona
You don’t even have to be a parent to know that. And I agree with you completely that we have lost because of the stress and this pressure. And like you said, this corporate America, American dream, model minority, all of it together, this pressure to perform, we’ve lost our children’s ability to be themselves and play. And I see it’s so young and we do we do a great job of it with our four year old.

00;42;10;11 – 00;42;26;15
Dr. Mona
At the time of this recording, he’s four, but we see our peers not doing the same. And then we all we start to second guess and we’re like, we, should we be doing that? Me, my husband, have these conversations and heart to hearts and we’re like, no, our son is happy. He’s love. He’s in school. He’s learning the things he does.

00;42;26;15 – 00;42;51;22
Dr. Mona
But when he goes off time, I’m going to let him run outside and climb a tree. I want him to get outside and use his imagination. Be bored, be comfortable with being idle. You mentioned this earlier, right? That we grew up not celebrating rest, right? Performance and being busy was just the nature and a lot of us, whether you are a model minority or not, do that as well because that’s what we were raised in.

00;42;51;22 – 00;43;09;15
Dr. Mona
This sort of rest is for the week, you know, rest. What do you mean, you’re not? You’re just going to sit around on a Saturday. That’s a lazy Saturday. No, that’s a Saturday. I’m not going to do anything. I’m just going to rest. And I, I agree, cultivating this sort of play based childhood that rest is healthy goes down to children.

00;43;09;15 – 00;43;37;16
Dr. Mona
And I know we’re talking about adults and me and you and our peers, but you are right on that. This goes down to how we parent children. And that’s why I really wanted you on the show, because I know all of the things that you just mentioned go downstream into childhood, it goes downstream into showing up. And how are we taking all of this baggage and the stuff that doesn’t serve us and really make it a better experience for our children, and also a better experience for ourselves?

00;43;37;16 – 00;43;38;12
Dr. Mona
It’s possible.

00;43;38;15 – 00;43;51;18
Prachi Gupta
Yeah, it is possible. And I think these are the things that actually, paradoxically, like the model minority myth we think will lead us to stability, success and happiness. But it doesn’t. And it’s actually, these skills that do.

00;43;51;21 – 00;44;01;07
Dr. Mona
Prachi, thank you so much. This was an amazing conversation. I love, love, love everything that you shared with us. Where can people go to stay connected and also where can they go to get your book?

00;44;01;07 – 00;44;23;10
Prachi Gupta
So my book is available hopefully at most bookstores across the country, but also, online you can go to bookshop.org is a website that I like a lot. You can also find it on Amazon for following me on social media. Probably Instagram is the best place. My Instagram handle is at Prachi Epirus.

00;44;23;13 – 00;44;39;21
Dr. Mona
I do thank you so much. I’ll be attaching all of this to our show notes as well. Again, her book is called they Called Us Exceptional and Other Lives that raised Us. I think it’ll really resonate with so many of you if this conversation resonated with you. Thank you so much for joining me today, Bauchi.

00;44;39;23 – 00;44;41;02
Prachi Gupta
Thanks for having me.

00;44;41;04 – 00;45;03;26
Dr. Mona
Prachi. Insight and sneak into her book and what she discussed and it was eye opening. I hope you love this conversation as much as I did. Please make sure to add this book to your reading list because it is an incredible one that, without even trying to, is a parenting book of what not to do. If you love this conversation, make sure to share our clips on social media, tag us and leave those reviews.

00;45;03;26 – 00;45;23;18
Dr. Mona
Please remember, it’s how the show grows and I want to be able to continue to bring you amazing guests and solo conversations as well, and stay tuned on my Instagram in the coming weeks, because I will be starting weekly giveaways as a thank you to our podcast community here. Remember to check out these convos on YouTube if you prefer, and I cannot wait to catch you all next week!

00;45;23;24 – 00;45;24;12
Dr. Mona
Stay well.