In South Asian communities, conversations about mental health have long been met with stigma, often shut down by some version of “What will people say?” It’s a sentiment uttered by many immigrant parents, aunties or uncles who think that admitting struggles is something shameful.
Indian American therapist and writer Sahaj Kohli, best known for her viral Instagram page “Brown Girl Therapy,” has made it her life’s work to challenge that notion. She launched the account in 2019 as a way of opening up conversations about mental health in the diaspora. And this week, she published her first book, “But What Will People Say?”, which aims to once again speak directly to immigrant families.
“When I was struggling with my mental health and I was living at home in my 20s, my parents actually said, ‘What will people say about this?’ They didn’t mean it to be hurtful, but they were genuinely concerned about how my own struggles reflected on them as parents,” Kohli told NBC News. “We’re just so concerned about what other people are gonna think or say about us, so we start to develop these performative behaviors and identities.”
Kohli started “Brown Girl Therapy” after switching career paths and becoming a therapist. It was a challenging time for her own mental health, she said, and none of the books she read or resources she turned to addressed what she was experiencing on the homefront.
“There wasn’t a lot of representation around having immigrant parents who might have different expectations from what you want,” she said. “For many of us who grew up in immigrant families, there’s already a path created for us.”
The page has amassed over 230,000 followers so far, and Kohli has continued to use it to post uplifting mental health, family and dating advice for women of color. She answers niche questions like, “What to do if your parents are emotionally blackmailing you” and talks about straddling a collectivistic Asian…
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