Being a listener in the silence: Reflections from a South Asian Therapist – By Nadiya Hussain

In traditional South Asian culture we don’t talk about things, it is better to be silent then
speak about feelings and emotions. This leads many of us entering adult life without the right
language to express how we feel. We are sometimes angry, sad, lost, anxious, happy or
grateful. These feelings are expressed as a discomfort in our stomach, a tightness in the chest,
pounding in our head, tears in eyes, but rarely words on our lips. Our parents never taught us
this dialect, they never spoke it in front of us and this is because they themselves were never
taught it either. If a lot of us don’t know how to speak this language, it won’t come as a
surprise that so few of us seek out a profession where we are acting as a translator. How can
we be in a role where we help people find the words to describe their feelings if we don’t
know how to do this for ourselves?

I started my journey as a therapist by being a client. 15 years ago I walked into the
counselling services department of my college. I would like to be able to describe this
moment to you, but it’s hard to remember, all I can say is that it feels blurry, desperate, and
somewhat fragmented. My counsellor was a kind faced young lady who sat patiently with her
hands folded on her lap. She smiled gently as she waited for me to speak. When I did speak, I
couldn’t find the right words, in that session and in many of the other sessions that followed.
Like most people from traditional South Asian families, I was raised to not speak about
anything personal to people outside the family, having others know your difficulties is not
just a betrayal of your kin, but a public display of your own weakness and failings. This rule
of silence was so silent that people didn’t even talk about the rule, they just somehow knew
it. Eventually, I practiced expressing myself in the non-judgmental, open space she had
created, and I felt a surprising relief.

When I decided to become a counsellor, it was because I had realised that the silence
perpetuated by my culture did not serve me, or others like me. During my training I was one
of two South Asian people in my entire year group, and one of six ethnic minorities in total,
the rest of the students on my course were white. There are many reasons for this. Firstly, to
qualify in this profession you need to be able to afford to do the course at a college or
university, you need to be willing to work for free for a period of time. Then following on
from that you need to be able to pay to see your own therapist as this is a requirement of most
courses. Many people that can afford to do this are also middle-class and white. Secondly,
white people don’t have the same level of stigma around mental health that we do, so going
into such a profession would not be met with the same barriers from their friends, family, or
community.

On the traditional South Asian train to a successful life, Doctors, Dentists and Lawyers all sit
in the first class and most other professionals are riding in the economy carriage. Although
this configuration has changed slightly over the years with other professions moving up the
ranks (much to everyone’s relief), one thing remains the same; Counsellors are rarely even on
the train. They are still at the platform, waiting to be let on by the other passengers. Being a
counsellor is not deemed as a worthy profession because the previous generation failed to see
the wealth that it could bring their children. My parents’ idea of wealth was to buy a nice
house and car as well as to educate their children because these were all the things that they

themselves lacked in their childhood. When you talk about wealth now, it’s not just all of the
above, but also about having a good work life balance. In general, it’s having the time to
nurture your mind and body with things that are good for you. When done ethically, being a
counsellor offers this type of wealth to the people that take up the profession. We look at our
personal issues in great detail before training, we are obliged to take time out when we need
to. Unfortunately, these aspects of counselling training are relatively unknown to the wider
South Asian community, and even if they were, the value of such personal discovery would
be next to nothing. The value of what a counsellor does for others would never be anywhere
near to a doctor’s value, even though we are both in the healing profession.

Later on in life I scrolled through one the of the most popular directories for a counsellors,
looking for someone who would understand me once again. I struggled to see a brown face
amongst all the white ones. After rooting through a few more pages, I came across a black
therapist. I contacted her because I felt that she would understand my struggles more than a
white therapist, and perhaps her parents were from another country too (I hoped). As a child
of immigrants, it has always been hard for me to feel understood. My parents are from
another country, they grew up in a different way. They don’t understand what it is to be a
British South Asian. For some South Asians, this feeling of not being understood is triggered
again when we see white therapists and have to explain our culture to them, we have to
educate them on our customs, we have to explain why the rules are unspoken. We are
juggling the roles of both client and teacher, which can sometimes move us away from what
we want to achieve in therapy. Thankfully, I am not the only one who has noticed a need for
more South Asian therapists. There are directories that help connect clients with therapists,
such as The South Asian Therapy Directory. Sites like this are great progress, but there is still
limited numbers of professionals listed, particularly in the UK.

As a counsellor I listen a lot to what people say, but I also listen to what they don’t say.
Sadly, it is the same culture of silence that is also stopping us from becoming listeners to each
other. In my family, this silence was passed down from generation to generation, from my
grandmother to my mother, but when it was passed to me, I decided to trade it for something
better. I hope others reading this do too.

By Nadiya Hussain | Instagram: @southasiancounsellor