Trigger warning, sensitive content to follow.

康斯坦斯·吴已经有几年了。并不是说她没有工作，在社交媒体缺席期间，康斯坦斯一直在稳步工作，目前是明星The Terminal Listwith a couple of film projects in post-production. Earlier this year, she also announced the publication of her first book,做一个场景，她告诉10月4日。每周娱乐that she found writing the book a “healing and heartening” experience, and that her “hope for this book is that it might encourage readers to look at their own lives in this way, too.”

Which is also why she returned to Twitter last week – so that in sharing what she’s struggled with and what she’s been through, it might help others come out of the low points in their lives.

这里的主要启示是，早在2019年after she reacted carelessly on social media关于更新新鲜的船and was dragged on social media and also criticised by her peers for being a “blight on the Asian American community”, she attempted suicide. Constance has spent the last few years prioritising her mental health, and this is the part of her post that resonated the most with me:

“asam[Asian Americans] don’t talk about mental health enough. While we’re quick to celebrate the representation wins, there’s a lot of avoidance around the more uncomfortable issues within our community.”

根据我的个人经验，是中国加拿大人，她是正确的。康斯坦斯现在已经40岁了，尽管年轻一代的亚洲人肯定会更了解有关心理健康，健康沟通和应对行为的讨论，但前几代人根本没有任何语言。即使我们确实有语言，翻译也是一个挑战。

例如，我的好处是更加了解心理健康及其对我生活的影响外部of my Chinese culture, but when I try to integrate and transfer these learnings back to my parents, I don’t have the actual vocabulary to be able to talk to them about it – and they don’t have the vocabulary, both emotional and verbal, to understand it.

My ma has been battling multiple chronic diseases for almost 30 years. My dad has been her caregiver throughout, during a time when they should have been able to enjoy the fruits of their labour, having worked hard for decades. Instead of going on holiday, they spent their time in and out of hospitals. Instead of finding new hobbies, they became experts on dozens of medications, and their days were occupied with medical appointments, scans, tests, blood work, and more.

So it’s been three decades of stress and anxiety and depression – OF COURSE it has. They’re constantly worried and they are always angry, with themselves, with each other, and with the universe. They need help. More help than I’m qualified to give them…

但是他们不知道他们需要帮助，这意味着他们当然不知道如何寻求帮助。马上没有问题告诉她肿瘤科医生的四肢麻木，她敏锐地意识到身体上的每一个身体变化，以至于她知道自己的癌症去年回来了，然后测试回来了。但是她不知道焦虑也是一种疾病，抑郁症也是一种疾病，这些疾病以自己的方式具有感染性 - 因为它们是通过不耐烦，愤怒，有时甚至是残酷的，针对关心的人们她最……。然后，谁也变得焦虑，沮丧和卑鄙。

This was never part of my parents’ upbringing, so it was never part of my at-home upbringing. As Constance says, for many of us, we didn’t talk about the “uncomfortable issues” at home. That for sure is improving in the community among the younger members who are pushing for change, but there are so many of us who have been shaped by silence and avoidance.

I consider myself lucky, though, because while my parents never learned how to truly talk to each other and engage with others about mental health, the advantage they gave me was education, opportunities to learn from others. So, I have life skills they don’t have – and one of them is the basic life skill of knowing how to ask for mental health help. Still, even if they could ask for help, there aren’t enough resources.

去年，我读了阿比奥拉·阿戈罗（Abiola Agoro）的一篇文章，涉及她的心理健康如何改善一旦她能够与黑人治疗师一起工作。To be clear, I am not comparing the Asian experience to the Black experience or saying that the traumas that my parents have encountered is at all the same as the trauma of systemic anti-Black racism. My point is about therapy and finding the right therapist. As Abiola said, “I’ve found I feel most comfortable when my therapist is a Black woman or Black femme,” because already there was common ground, she didn’t have to explain her existence from the beginning. And when you get those basics out of the way, you can begin unpacking.

在我父母的情况下，最初的共同点是语言。如果他们用英语说话，他们将无法从治疗中获得任何有意义的东西。除此之外，还有一些文化和世代的理解 - 成为一定年龄的中国加拿大人，离开家开始在国外开始另一种生活，以经历了移民的刺激和失望……

就我而言，这是移民之旅的双重身份，是两个世界，在试图在另一个世界中找到一个位置，以调和这一二重性以使其成为整体。

I would imagine that Constance could probably relate to some of this in what she’s saying about Asian Americans and mental health. If we’re not talking about it enough then how can there be established resources to help us talk about it more? And even if we want to talk about it, there are language barriers to consider, both the language of spoken word and the language of emotion that can be specific to a community and their experience.

Still, it has to begin with knowing. In many Asian communities, we are both not culturally programmed to prioritise mental health, and culturally programmed to resist asking for help. So the terrible cycle continues. It’s a great service, then, what Constance is trying to illuminate here and in her book. Her goal is to start a dialogue across communities to begin that process of deprogramming and reprogramming how we approach mental health within our communities – and that itself requires a community effort. This is how she’s using her own example and her platform to amplify her mental health advocacy.

这使我们从前几天回到了Twitter和她的帖子。正如她所说，她在发行书籍之前谨慎地浸入。这是封面：

康斯坦斯·吴 - 制作场景

仅封面艺术就有话要说 - 至少它对我说话，我想知道其他中国人是否会感觉同样。因为红色带有大量中国能量。还有一些……沃霍利亚的能量，对吗？我的脑子里是他最著名的作品：毛泽东的丝绸屏幕，本来是模仿的毛的小红皮书。沃霍尔（Warhol）与中国共产党的宣传以及对西方价值观的否定和西方的关注与集体的责备相比，这是对集体的提升……即使毛泽东本人成为偶像，也鼓励整个中国崇拜他，就好像他是西方流行歌星一样。

这是一个有趣的地方，可以探索一个人 - 两种文化的内部冲突以及如何将冲突转变为和谐。我并不是说这就是康斯坦斯一定要做的事情，但这就是我通过我的特定镜头所吸引的。我等不及要读它。