302. Real Self-Care w/ Dr. Pooja Lakshmin MD

I've definitely seen them evolve a little bit around it, but like going to a therapist is kind of a still, you know, hand over mouth, gasp type of moment.

I think there's Subject is just so interesting to me and so intricate, but I'm glad we're finally just doing it.

And then another opportunity came where we were trying to help support a panel and you reached out to her. And yeah, no. How was that? Tell me more about that. Can you tell our listeners more about that?

"Real Self-Care" has been featured by Good Morning America, NPR's "Code Switch," the New York Times, the Ezra Klein Show, the Guardian, and translated into 10 languages. She lives in Austin with her partner, Justin, their toddler, and their two cats, Kitty and Fifi.

Needless to say, we're so fortunate and feel so humbled that Dr. Lakshmin Shared her time with us to be able to talk more about her book and even her story with us so I'm really excited for you all to listen in and let's get into it Hey, Dr. Lakshmin, thank you so much for joining us today today on the Asian in Austin podcast. I know you've got a super busy schedule.

You've been all around sharing some more of your story in your book, and I'm just really appreciative that you've been able to share some of your time with us today. So welcome. Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here with both of you. Yeah, so we start our episodes off by giving our guests an opportunity to share a little bit more about their identities.

So I'm wondering if you could share with our listeners your ethnicities, pronouns, any other identities that you'd like to share with us. Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: Yeah, absolutely. So I am South Asian American. I go by she, her, I, my parents immigrated to the United States, so I am second generation slash first. I always get confused.

I feel like it's like one and a half generation, but yeah, so kind of a lot of the typical tensions and struggles that come with being the first generation that is grown, that's born here and growing up here, which I'm sure we will dive into. That's it. Yeah. Appreciate it. And yeah, that definitely resonates.

We, Sandra and I have definitely discussed a lot, some of the pressures that can sometimes occur or, you know, get brought up when you're kind of the first to navigate a lot of, in this case, like the American systems. So I know you've had quite a year, but how's 2024 been treating you so far? Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: 2024 has really been off to a great start.

I, my book "Real Self-Care" came out last year, last March, and so the book launch kind of took me all over and it really, it really changed kind of the trajectory of my career and what I do for work in some sense, because before the book came out, it did not used to travel at all for work.

Now, since I'm being asked to bring "Real Self-Care" to all these different organizations and schools and places, I'm on the road more, but I think I have come into 2024 kind of feeling like I'm hitting my stride. My son just turned two last weekend, and so I also feel like me and my partner Justin are kind of like hitting our stride as parents also now that we've been doing this for two years. So yeah, I can't complain. I mean, I guess the only thing I can complain about is the heat.

Because it's so freaking hot right now, but that is Austin in the summer. I know it's starting. I can't believe we're already here with that heat and also happy belated birthday to your son. That's so awesome. Really excited and happy to see the book launch and this new chapter of your career has really kind of rocketed off. So congratulations.

How did that all really shape you in adolescence or even managing early stages in your career and then wanting to pursue where you are today? I'd love for you to dig a little bit further into that. Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: I think that, like I mentioned earlier, being kind of the first generation that's born and raised here. We are kind of the holders of this assimilation process, but also the tension that inherently comes when you are spending.

Much of your time in a new culture, quote unquote "new", you know, American culture. And then there's the quote unquote "old culture" at home with your parents. So for me, you know, my parents are from South Asia. They came here, my mom was in her twenties. They had an arranged marriage, and my dad had gone to medical school in India.

And past all of his, you know, the extensive licensing examinations and things that foreign medical graduates have to go through and was able to get a residency in Philadelphia. And he used to practice as a physician. So my dad was a doctor. My mom stayed at home and raised me and my sister.

My sister is nine years younger than me, so I kind of feel like we were both, to some extent, only children because by the time she was born, I was in such a different life stage and you know, then when she was sort of like growing up for a lot of it, I was kind of out of the house. I guess that model minority myth definitely was strong in my family. You know, it was kind of like studying was the most important thing and getting good grades. And it was just sort of expected.

It wasn't necessarily that it was praised. It was just sort of expected. There wasn't like, there was no question about it.

You know, it was just, well, that's... and looking back, I think it's, that's interesting because I do feel like friends that I had that were not Asian... it just felt like their childhoods were more well, well rounded and there was more of an opportunity for them to be children in a way where I think for first gen kids, we do bear this burden of becoming parentified more quickly, like having to grow up more quickly because you're also serving as a translator

to some extent, sometimes in families, like literally as a translator and then, you know, also kind of metaphorically. So, you know, I went through all of the sort of typical struggles that a lot of Indian girls went through in the 90s and 2000s and still go through. I hated that my skin was darker than everybody else's. I desperately wanted to have blonde hair and blue eyes and white skin. I was you know, kind of embarrassed about the food that my family ate, and I didn't understand why.

I remember I was saying, like, we had to eat two dinners, we had to eat the roti, and then we also had to eat the rice. And I was like, why do we have two dinners? You know? And at that time, Indian food was not cool, like it is now. So it really was, like, weird. Like, I didn't want to talk about it with friends. Like, I wouldn't have friends over for dinner or anything like that.

And yeah, so I, it was a really... and I grew up in, in a predominantly white area of Pennsylvania, about an hour and a half outside of Philadelphia. And it was once I went to college at University of Pennsylvania at Penn that I kind of found more of my community, I guess. But even, it's interesting because I think in some ways I always felt like I was too white to fit in with the super Indian folks. And then I was like, not.

I was not a white person, so I was brown and didn't fit in with, so I always kind of fell in between because at Penn there is a very strong Indian, South Asian community and lots of different interest groups and, you know, dance and all these different things. And I'm a terrible dancer and I remember trying to, trying out for, at Penn it's called PENNaach. I tried out and it was horrible. Like, you know, so I just kind of always felt like, oh gosh, I'm not even doing that right.

And I guess the other piece and sorry, this is a very long winded answer, but is that I spend a lot of time in India growing up probably every other summer. My mom and I, and then when my sister was born, she would come to, we'd spend the whole summer at my grandmother's house in India. My mom has two sisters. And so my aunts would be there. My cousins would be there. And it was always so fun.

I loved being in India and getting to have that relationship with my cousins there, but I did always feel like I, Was missing out on summer here in the States and all my friends were, you know, go to the pool and doing all sorts of summer things and I was kind of off. I guess we had a, I feel like this happened even before AOL and AIM.

You know, so we had to write, like, I remember writing letters to my friends, and sometimes it would, the letters wouldn't even arrive until we got back from the trip. Just thinking about it is wild, because now, you know, it's like, we have WhatsApp, you have social media, it doesn't really matter.

I specifically remember maybe this was in like fourth or fifth grade one summer when I came back before school started having this long conversation with my best friend at the time where she caught me up on every single song that was popular now that I had missed and I remember this is very this dates me this song that was popular at that time was it was right when Brandy and Monica that song came out The Boy Is Mine So, yeah, so I didn't know what was cool so she had to kind of catch me up.

People in India always knew that I was American. I speak Kannada, which is the language that my family speaks, but even still, obviously a huge accent and just the way that I did my hair and the clothes that I wore. But I think it was some of the things that stand out there as being kind of setting me apart is like clothing. You know, I would always have to kind of wear more conservative clothes in India, like no shorts, longer skirts, things like that. No tank tops.

And it was kind of like this in between of always sort of having to navigate and figure out where you fit. And I think that to some extent, that's still something that I am constantly navigating and I've been become a lot less insecure about it and now I know that I have this tendency and I can catch myself when I'm wanting to sort of be part of the club or whatever it is and pull back. But I think a lot of that stems from the childhood experiences that I had.

Yeah, in retrospect, I mean, do you feel like those summer trips to India also had like positive effects? Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: Absolutely. I have so many just wonderful memories and I love that I have this connection to India and that it does feel like a place that is a version of home for me. My parents are retired now and they actually they have a condo in Bangalore and they spend a couple months a year there and I have cousins that are there, my aunts and uncles.

So it's, it's definitely, I think it was a net positive, but then, you know, there's just these bits that, yeah,

So we're kind of in the process of navigating when that first trip will be. We have not yet taken him on an airplane. So that's the limiting factor of just how long it takes to get there and the travel. When I was reading the book, and this is kind of in the early chapters and you kind of bring this up, I definitely, this was a moment of like, did I read this right? So I want to talk about it.

So before you arrived where you got today, and again, it's, you know, you have this amazing career, this amazing book, you talk about navigating your career early on and you kind of had a pivot. And so in your late twenties, you dropped out of a very competitive residency program and joined a commune that taught orgasmic meditation. And that's the first time I've ever heard that term. How did that get on your radar? And more, what I want to dig into, how did your parents take that?

How did they react? How did you explain that whole pause? Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: I decided to include this part of my story right in the introduction of the book because I wanted my readers to know that I was coming to real self care, not just as a psychiatrist who takes care of patients struggling with these things, but also as a human myself who has made mistakes and kind of went down the rabbit hole of extreme wellness and came out the other side.

So that was kind of a decision that I made because it definitely is a pretty wild story and people have reactions to it. And yeah, I, as we had talked about, I'd kind of gone through my childhood and teenage years and early adulthood, sort of striving to be the good Indian girl, getting good grades, going to good schools, becoming a doctor, getting married. And I found myself in my late 20s in my psychiatry residency, just completely burnt out because I had not taken a break.

I just gone from undergrad to med school to residency and also really disillusioned with medicine and psychiatry at the time. You know, I just kind of felt like the image that I had of being a doctor was very different than what it was on the ground. And, um, I kind of, I had an extreme reaction that I do not recommend to other people, but I blew up my life.

I left my marriage, I moved into this commune in San Francisco, left my residency, and I went really down this rabbit hole of alternative medicine, like all of the "woo" stuff, like the meditation, the spirituality, like all of that.

And, um, I realize that also is not the answer to life's problems, and there's just as many contradictions and hypocrisies in the alternative medicine world as there are in mainstream medicine, and that you can't just outsource your decision making, basically, that you need to really, that real wellness comes from making the hard decisions in your own life.

And I always like to share that when I talk about this, that I was extremely privileged to be able to even blow up my life like blowing up your life is for sure a privilege. And one of the reasons that I could is because I did not have loans from medical school because of all of the sacrifices that my parents made and all of their hard work as immigrants in America gave me the luxury of being able to have an existential crisis.

So I just want to acknowledge that and Sandra, your question of how my parents react. So it's funny because I, a couple of months ago, I was on another podcast that talks about, it's called the Mashup Americans, where they talk about sort of like the mishmash of cultural identities. And I realized that I actually didn't tell my parents. I actually, I just did it.

I just was doing it and it was only after the fact that I told them that I had left medicine and that I was with this group and I was exploring these other modalities, meditation. And it was tough, you know, that I didn't talk with my parents for a while, like maybe a year or so, like that we were just not really in contact. And I think we needed that space or I needed that space to set that boundary after kind of going so hard for so long to kind of meet certain expectations.

You know, again, when I talk about this, I don't mean to... I think my parents did the best that they could with what they knew. And you don't have to set such a traumatic or violent boundary... like that was definitely a big rupture. But it was the only way that I knew how. The other thing I want to add is that now, 10 years later, I'm 40 now. This happened in my late twenties.

I think that it's so interesting because I don't think that our parents, I say our, like being model minority Asian, I don't think they're wrong with steering us to things like medicine or law or engineering, like these careers are... very secure.

Uh, they offer a level of, um, respect prestige that actually-- We live in a capital society for better or worse, and you do your life is better when you have some money, I would not be able to have the career that I have now as a thought leader and to be able to write a book and all the things that I've done if I had not, after that period of my life, gone back to residency finished and become a board certified psychiatrist and all those things, even though it

felt like at the time, oh, my gosh, like, why did I, you know, kind of lose my twenties to school on the other side? Now? I do think it was worth it. Yeah.

And so what is a surefire way to ensure that, and it's these types of careers, playing the game the way it needs to be played so that you don't get tripped up and have those other things. So I think, yeah, that that does make a lot of sense. And I think there's like, still this weird tension to honor, giving the children an opportunity to find that security on their terms.

And I think, you know, what you described in a more, I don't know if extreme is the right word, in your way, you had to do that the way that you needed to at the time. And I'm really happy to hear that you were able to come out on the other side as well.

I think so often people who kind of get into these types of groups, kind of get stuck and I'm just curious for you, like what gave you the will to leave and the like encouragement or, you know, courage to, to go ahead and say this actually isn't what I thought it was and to kind of go into another direction. Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: Yeah, you know, I'm actually still kind of working through how to talk about that time and kind of processing for myself how to talk about it.

But I guess one thing that I can share now is that it was definitely not any type of like hero's journey. I thought at the time that I was letting them down by leaving and I felt a lot of guilt and shame and it was not until years and years later that I found out kind of how dark the story was inside the group and had a better understanding of what was going on that I wasn't aware of previously.

But I think in a lot of ways, it probably resembles to some degree, maybe when people leave a religion and you really do feel like you, you feel like you're letting them down, as opposed to feeling like it's something triumphant at the time. I appreciate you sharing that. Yeah, I can't imagine how difficult that must have been, but again, glad that you are here on the other side.

So really, in the height of the pandemic, he grew up in Texas, he grew up outside of Dallas, and he went to UT Austin for graduate school. He went to the LBJ school. So he had lived in Austin about a decade ago. We met in Washington, D. C., and we had been living together. And in this little apartment, and then the pandemic hit, we were both working from home and we realized that we just wanted more space. We wanted to get out of DC. We wanted to leave kind of the East coast grind.

And so Austin was where we decided to come. And so we packed up our car and our two cats. We drugged our two cats, I should say, for the long drive and we were really lucky too. It was before housing.

Prices got like super, super wild, so we were able to buy a house and for, you know, a reasonable price, whereas in D. C. you'd have to pay a million dollars for like a row home that still needed to be completely gutted and renovated and the first year or two, I didn't get out much because it was still kind of the height of the pandemic. It wasn't until really like 2023 that I started to feel like I was getting to know Austin and I have to say that I love it. I love it.

I actually, I've not missed D. C. once. I mean, I miss my friends, but I do not miss D. C. I think that Austin has the perfect combination of the culture and amenities of being in a big city while feeling like you live in A medium sized town, maybe everyone we know our neighbors, we hang out with them. I was invited to join a dinner club, maybe like a couple weeks after I moved in. So like I kind of was locked into this great group of women who have been meeting once a month for like a decade.

So that. Was amazing luck. And when we had our son, we were able to find a daycare close by that is affordable, which is another thing that is not would not have happened on the East Coast. And then what else? I love the food. I love queso. So that worked out.

Yeah. Yeah. One thing that is very different, though, is that Austin is much less diverse than other places that I've lived. It feels like, and I, this is true, there are very few Black people in Austin, and I think, you know, as Asians, like outside of Latinx folks, I feel like we're kind of probably the most significant other minority, and it does feel a bit very segregated too, so that's something that feels different. So those are things that it's definitely been an adjustment on that side.

I'm hoping it feels like Austin is moving in the direction of more diversity, especially with the influx of people coming from Texas and Colorado and the East Coast. I know people in Austin are not happy about that, but Yeah, I mean, I think that's part of this, you know, conundrum that Austin faces a little bit. The charm is we've heard it described or have described in the podcast.

It's like a, you know, like you said, medium, small to medium town pretending to be a big city, but like has both. So that's what makes it really appealing. And then there's all the other stuff that also provide some challenges that you mentioned as well, too. And, you know, hopefully, I think there is a lot more conversation happening around it and hopefully a lot more action too, but yeah, I think Austin, even for Austinites, there's like a love hate relationship with it.

So, I think you're naming all the right things as someone who's been here for a couple of years now. You're catching it.... so, Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: Yeah. Yeah. And I think maybe the other thing that's different for me is just driving because other places that I lived, I was more reliant on the Metro or the subway and here having to drive everywhere is different, but I actually, I thought that would bother me more, but it actually hasn't. I don't mind a commute.

I live like way South Austin and I used to live like way North Austin. So I'd like go down to UT and like a podcast jamming out to music or even like, we'll talk about self care here in a second, but like being able to be in the car just alone with myself and like, it's a space it has been in the past, a space for me to really be able to just decompress in some ways and like, yeah, feel, feel like I can be alone with my thoughts in a good way.

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: Yeah, well, it's a transition space that when you don't have it, yeah, it's like abrupt, the change. Yeah.

What is faux self care? Why do you think self care is resonating with so many folks right now? Was the pandemic a big catalyst in all of this? Or do you think it always existed? And now we're just spending more times investing in ourselves? Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: So, you know, when I was writing the book, I was researching the term self care and I found that an interesting statistic that Google searches for self care peaked the day after Donald Trump's election.

Of course, the pandemic impacted it for sure, and definitely has put mental health, I think, more at the forefront of people's minds, but I also think that the upheaval that we've experienced collectively in the United States from a political standpoint and also all of the, you know, racial reckonings that have happened, you know, after George Floyd's murder, like, I think that all of those different pivotal moments are the type of thing that does sort of define a generation.

And I think that and you know, we see in Gen Z in particular being so open about mental health and guarding their peace. So I think all of that comes into play. I will say, though, even before I would say like I graduated residency in 2016. And so I think even then I would have patients who were coming in and they were saying, you know, "Dr. Lakshmin, I'm stressed out. I'm burnt out. I'm not sleeping well. I'm not eating well.

And I feel like it's my fault because I have the meditation app on my phone that I could be using. I just can't motivate myself to do it." So I think that's been there. It's probably just proliferated as people also were spending more and more of their lives in the digital world too.

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: Yeah. Well, maybe I'll answer that and then I can talk about the difference between faux self care and real self care. Yeah. Tied together. Yeah. I mean, I think there, there definitely is a lot more of like holistic medicine, integrative medicine, and then all of the kind of complimentary modalities, like things like, you know, like yoga, meditation, breathwork, craniosacral, reiki, like all this stuff.

And, you know, that was one of the reasons, like kind of feeling disillusioned with psychiatry was one of the reasons that I fell so deep into the wellness world, sort of exploring all of these different alternative modalities. And I think what my take is that there are some things that are evidence based. You know, yoga definitely has evidence. Like, exercise in general, movement, diet, nutrition has an evidence base. Meditation, too.

But all, none of those things singularly, is going to treat a major depressive disorder or a diagnosis of PTSD or obsessive compulsive disorder. They will help as part of your overall program for having a healthier life, but they're not going to substitute for taking medication if you have moderate to severe depression. Psychiatric conditions, and I think that we lose that nuance, right? Like people want to just kind of have it be one or the other.

And there's a lot of polarization and, you know, demonization of different things. I think also that, you know, holistic and integrative medicine came about because people feel like mainstream medicine is not serving them. In particular, women, they feel dismissed and they feel like their concerns are not being properly addressed or they're being brushed off or, you know, they're just kind of being told, Oh, no, it's fine. It's just anxiety or whatever.

And maybe there is anxiety too, but that doesn't mean that you should be dismissed. So I think it's important to keep in mind that these alternative meds. Practices come up because of a need. And then the last thing I'll say is that from what I've seen, there are great practitioners in all of these different areas. And there are bad practitioners in all of these different areas.

So it really is about the person and whether they are professional and licensed, if there's licensing, but they have integrity and they're staying in their lane and they know when something is out of their scope and they say, oh, actually, you know, you should go over here to check that out. And unfortunately, I don't think we can, or maybe not unfortunately, but just I think we can't make blanket statements about any one thing and just sort of be polarized about it.

So that's the advice that I would give folks who maybe are trying to think about what type of practitioners to see and how to go about choosing. The whole concept of faux self care versus real self care is I define faux self care as a product or a service that you're doing or buying in order to make yourself feel better.

So it's kind of a band aid that you put on the different problems that you're having, whether you're stressed out or you're burnt out or you're whatever kind of the issue is that you're feeling. And in a capitalist society, we are encouraged to buy things. And when we have feelings, we're encouraged to have buy things to make us feel better. Faux self care always keeps the status quo as it is.

It doesn't cause you to re examine the power dynamics in your relationships, or in your family system, or in your workplace, or your community. Real self care, on the other hand, is an internal process. It's a verb, it's not a noun. I define it as four principles. Boundaries, compassion, values, and power.

And when you start practicing these principles, you will naturally notice a shift in power dynamics in your family, in your relationships, in your wider networks, because once you start setting boundaries, other people are going to start responding to that and treating you differently. The other thing that's important with real self care is you can't buy it. It's not something that you can just check off a list. It's a practice.

It's something that you have to learn sort of like working out, like developing these muscles, but it stays with you as a lifelong thing, and it's also not prescriptive in the way like everybody has that friend that's like super into like soul cycle or whatever it is. And they're like, always like, "Oh, my God, just do this. This is the thing." And you're like, "I hate soul cycle." There's not one wellness practice. There's not one form of self care that's going to be the thing for everybody.

So with real self care, it's like, no, you need to find your own through the boundaries, compassion, values, and power. It's not that the faux self care is bad or evil or terrible. It's just that the faux it's a tool. It's a method. Whereas the principles, are a principle. So a principle you can make your own versus a method is circumscribed for a specific use in a specific situation.

So to bring this to life, because this is all like a little bit heady, a good example is imagine somebody that goes to a yoga class.

You go to Black Swan, and they're on their yoga mat the whole time, worried that they're not wearing the right Lululemon leggings, and like, the person next to them can hold a headstand, and they're like, "oh, like, I can't even do crow pose," and they leave for like, the yoga class more in their head than before they started, like they feel worse after yoga than they did before yoga versus somebody who practices real self care and, you know, sets boundaries

with her partner, let's say, and says, you know, I need to go to once a week. So can you be the one to do dinnertime with our kids or bedtime so I can do this? And you're compassionate with yourself when some of that yeah. Critical self talk comes up. You don't let it consume you and you have named your values. You know why yoga is important to you. Maybe it's because you like being in community and your yoga studio is one of your places of community.

Or maybe for you, it's more about being in your body and the physicality. And then you recognize that is actually power like you taking it. Your time and your energy outside of our productivity system to fuel yourself, that person actually takes in the medicine of yoga like they're actually present, but both of those people, like, if you just look at it superficially, they checked, like, went to yoga off their list. Yeah, that's helpful.

Am I right in maybe understanding that it's really using a combination of the principles that you've laid out and finding which tools are... live within those principles that you've identified for yourself. Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: So, yes, and so, yes, in terms of finding your kind of wellness practice. That is absolutely right. There's kind of like a second level of real self care.

I would say like the 400, like if that's the one on one is then applying it to actually like big decisions in your life. What do I want my career to be? Do I want to have kids or not? Who do I want a life partner? Like in those... and that doesn't happen overnight that happens over time, many years, like we do need the 101, we need something to help us be able to kind of get through the day to day.

And once you kind of start building that muscle, then it becomes also a little bit easier to see that you can apply this more widely to other decisions that you're making in your life.

And I think it's really hard to muddle through all of that and figure out what does that actually mean? How can I apply it? In my life, and so I really appreciate the example that you just walked through there. I think that was really visually or for me helpful.

that still live by the principles you're using to help you bring your maybe more day to day peace through these tools. I definitely like the person that would probably be too self conscious to go to yoga, so that's not my tool of use. Building Legos at home by myself, like, that is, that brings me peace, that brings me joy, and that helps clear my mind so that I can, like, think about Larger things like my career, relationships, boundaries that I'm trying to set and how I want to set them.

And I think that's what I'm hearing is kind of this like 101 up to the 400 type of thing of approaching real self care in your life. Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: Yes, yes. And the only thing that I would add to that great summary, your summary was much better than mine, would be that it's always changing. Like it never ends. Mmm. Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: It's because you always have to keep taking care of yourself as long as you're alive, and your context is always changing.

You're always moving into different roles, you're in a new job. You break up with someone, you know, somebody passes away, right? There's always going to be changes in the context. And so that, so then you'll find yourself probably stumbling a little bit and falling into old patterns. And that's to be expected for sure. But as you move along, you'll catch yourself more quickly. Yeah. I really appreciate you naming that. Cause I feel like.

As someone that struggles with rigidity or just like the concept of like, okay, this is the right way. And that means that's the final, like finite way to then navigate life. But as you mentioned, life continues to evolve and your situation changes. And it's okay to make adjustments as those things happen, as long as they feel true and good to you. I want to maybe apply some of this to another type of example that our listeners might more resonate with being Asian Americans.

You know, you mentioned those four principles, setting boundaries, learning to deal with guilt, developing self compassion, how you talk to yourself, and then getting clear on those values to make future decisions in life.

As you k now, in a lot of Asian cultures, children of like immigrant parents can, I think you mentioned at the beginning, being parentified at an early age or feeling like they have a lot of responsibility at a young age, not only for themselves, but in some cases for their parents to, to kind of this concept of kind of like repaying your parents for a life that they weren't afforded because of the sacrifices that they made.

And I can speak for myself where sometimes I- I've done a lot of work to not have that be this type of like... repaying them be my North Star for life because it doesn't necessarily serve me and my individual wants and desires, but there is an aspect that I still want to honor that I do feel like is a positive value to want to incorporate some sort of respect and repayment or just desire to honor what their experiences have

been so I guess this is a long way to set up the question of what advice you give people whose values still kind of embody family and the desire to show that love and respect to them, but it also might conflict with this new paradigm of prioritizing yourself first and then the guilt that kind of comes with it? Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: I love this question. My answer is going to be very long winded because I have a couple different things. It's all good. I feel like it's a complex thing.

Totally. So, so I guess the first thing is of course, you will feel that way, like, the goal is not to change your personality completely, right? If you've spent your whole life living with this conceptualization of, you know, my job is to make my parents proud and to make sure that all the sacrifices that they made were worth it, then that's always going to be part of your life-- upbringing or your kind of your blueprint. So we're not saying that's going to completely go away.

And, and like you said, I liked your point that it's not totally bad. Many cultures have a history and tradition of honoring elders and kind of showing and paying respect to the wisdom of the generation before. So I want to set it up by saying like that it's... it's not a bad thing to feel this way. And yes, you will, you'll always have this conflict or this tension. You'll know that you're moving in a direction of healthier.

I guess you'll know that you're moving in a direction of being at peace with the fact that you will always be in some level of this conflict when you're not angry at your parents, when you can make a choice.

Food, I think food is always one of the ones that this falls around, and I, I'll just give an example for me years ago, but like in college, my mom would bring all of this Indian food to my dorm, like all sorts of Indian, South Indian food, and I would never eat any of it, but I always felt so bad, and so then it would just be in the freezer, and then when she would come the next time, like, I had to give her the Tupperwares, you know, because, like, they saved all

the cool containers, and it was just, like, this cycle of guilt and guilt. Like, I have patients now where they feel really bad with Asian parents of saying no to food, like, parents often, like, bring food. So, where you can say, you know, we don't need that right now, or, like, we're okay, and not feel angry, and then also not feel consumed with guilt. If you feel consumed with guilt, that means that you have more work to do in therapy.

The place that you want to get to is to be able to name what the ideal scenario is and have that be aligned with your values and something that you've named. Like, maybe you can say for yourself, like, this is arbitrary, but say on each of my birthdays, it's important for me to have my parents bring food from our culture. And I want that to be something that is included at the table when we're having dinner. And that might have a very specific meaning for you and signify something in that.

And that's your own thing. So when you can kind of move in that direction and then not get angry, if on top of that, your mom or your dad, like, makes some sort of comment about it being the wrong thing or like, blah, blah, blah, whatever drama happens, letting that happen, just letting it happen and not getting enmeshed into it and letting it ruin the meaning that it has for you. And your parents might not understand why that specific thing has the meaning and that's okay.

I think that's a place where a lot of people get stuck. You spend too much energy believing that you're going to be able to change your parents mind or that they're going to be able to understand where you're coming from and why you're making different decisions and setting boundaries and doing things a little bit differently. They will never completely understand and that's okay. When you get to a place of acceptance, that's when you know that you're kind of on the right track.

Does that make sense? Yeah, I think it's that level of tension that you might feel when you're feeling, really I think what we're talking about is the in between, that in between feeling that of this like, for me I'll just say the, I think growing up being born and raised in the States, there's a bigger lean to like individualism maybe, versus Asian cultures that really promote kind of this collective prioritization.

And figuring out, well, there's parts of it that I really appreciate and like growing up, and there's some that just feel so in contradiction of the aspects of this individualistic culture or like thing that really resonates with me or feels aligned with how I want to live my life. And what I'm hearing maybe is that once there's a little bit of acceptance that tug will always be there... It's a matter of how much that tension is impacting the way that you navigate life.

Maybe not navigate life, but yeah, that tension how much it like dictates your reactions to things or Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: yeah, how much distress it causes you Yeah, yeah, that's where you'll notice as less distress happens over time you're starting to really embody those values that you want to live by. Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: Yes. And the only other thing I would add there is that it's okay to pick and choose, right?

Because what the generation before probably would ideally want is that you take everything. You do all the things. All of your kids know the language, you're eating the food all the time, like everyone goes to this, right? And you get to decide. And it will take time. It will take many years for you to land. On the right equilibrium.

So I just want to also name that like, don't beat yourself up for skewing one way or the other, because you will as you're navigating this, you're figuring this out to alongside helping heal some of the intergenerational wounds.

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: Sandra I just want to say I like that you mentioned that it's a conversation with you that you have with yourself, and it's important to know that you probably won't be able to have that conversation with your parents, and that's okay, and maybe you will at some point, but your goal should not be to have the conversation with your parents.

Yes, that is just on a personal note, something I constantly work on and reconciling and just acceptance of these are likely conversations that I will never have out loud with my parents, but they are conversations that I have within myself. So that struck a note there, but I want to move in this topic.

I think is very interconnected with what we're discussing here, but something else that you discussed and I know you even hosted a panel around this is intergenerational trauma when we're discussing our parents. There are a lot of beliefs and behaviors of our culture that we inherit from our families or ancestors. Some of them may remain unconscious. Some of them don't as, as you start to invest more in discovering your own values and again, figuring out how much of.

What your parents expectations and all of that you work and invest in. I'm curious through this session in this panel that you've had in discussions that you host, how do we consciously disrupt some of these intergenerational traumas? How do we even begin to begin the work and scratch the surface? Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: Yeah, I mean, I think it's a really big topic. We could spend an hour talking about that in itself. I would say actually the boundaries piece is the first start.

The conversation we just had about how to navigate what's yours versus what is theirs and what is ours. Those three different buckets. That is the way in to doing some of this intergenerational trauma work because the thing with immigration trauma is that it's a loss. It's a loss of a past culture, you know, a physicality of people. So, the way that somebody responds to losing something is to try and hold onto it, to try and get it back.

And so, the navigation of cultural traditions, and language, and food, and all these things, is that. ends up being some of the battleground. And I don't think that you should, it's usually not helpful to start directly.

You have a better chance of having it be received if you come from an indirect place, like with boundaries, like, you know, it's not going to, it's not going to work if you just sort of be like, "Hey, let's have a conversation about intergenerational trauma, because I'm talking to my therapist about this. And I realized that Blah, blah, blah." Like, that's not going to go over well.

And I'm curious if like there, I know there's probably not a one size fits all solution to being able to sift through and like pull apart which ones actually is your individual boundary, like what feels good to you versus like what has been told to you as like a boundary.

I'm curious if there's any sort of helpful question that someone can ask themselves that can make that a little bit more clear about what's my boundary versus the boundary that I've lived by, but it's maybe like my family's boundaries. Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: I would say collect data on things that are less important and see how you feel. Let's say a small one is like whether people take their shoes off when they come into your house.

And even if that's like a clear thing for you, yes or no, maybe play around with either side and then see how you feel because the feeling that you get, like if there is like an aversion or like a feeling of disgust, then you know, Oh, this was, that's what it feels like when a boundary has been crossed. Or if you like don't really have any feelings and it's kind of like a non event, then you're like, Oh, okay. That's how I know that's what it feels like in my body when I'm a yes.

So try that with things that are very low states because everybody's line is different and everybody's body responds differently. But the thing that will tell you is your body's response. Yeah. And what I'm hearing in that example, it's like, yeah, maybe you lived your life with being like, I'm a no shoes inside household. But actually when I've like tested this thing, I don't, it doesn't really impact me that much when I see people wearing shoes in the house.

And so maybe that was a boundary that I grew up with that not necessarily one that aligns with things that I really value or like how it impacts my feelings. Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: Yes, exactly. Exactly. Appreciate that. Yeah.

Understanding, recognizing the systemic barriers when it comes to these intersectional identities that we carry and have as women as, you know, being people of color and things like that. And so I just want to recognize that it's... we are just so grateful to have these kind of very nuanced conversations and feel that there is so much work to be done, but just to have the privilege of having the conversation, just thank you. Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: Well, it was absolutely my pleasure.

Thank you for having me. I enjoyed being here with you both. You have an amazing book. It is called "Real Self-Care." So check that out. If you haven't. We'd like to close the episodes with our guests doing a rapid fire. So if you're up for it, just let us know the first thing that comes to mind. But before we do that, we'd like to ask all of our guests this question. What is your Asian American identity mean to you today?

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: I think right now as a parent, having a little kid, I think I'm thinking about it a lot in terms of next generation and especially having a kid who is. biracial, and will likely be sort of ethnically ambiguous, I think, in terms of his skin tone. I'm thinking about what pieces I want him to take with him, and I'm not totally sure yet. I'm open and curious right now about my identity on that side. Yeah, curiosity, I think, is a wonderful way to kind of position that.

So rapid fire, here we go. What is your favorite Asian snack grown up? Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: Oh, Chakli. Which is a South Indian like fried dough. It's basically just fried dough. Yeah. Oh, okay. Is that something that could, you could purchase packaged or is that made at home? Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: You can get it packaged and I think they do have it at H Mart. Oh, okay. We'll look out for that. Where do you have fun in Austin? Oh, where do we have fun?

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: One place that I really like is Meanwhile. The brewery in South Austin, you're a Southie, you're a Southie, that's very far from me. But Meanwhile-- it's a great one. And then is there an example or a principle that you feel comfortable sharing that's a self care principle for you? Dr. Pooja Lakshmin: Gosh, I have so many, but I talk about this in the book, the pause. So I say that the boundary is the pause. And then you always have three choices, yes, no, or negotiate.

Because no always has a cost. So you might not always be able to say no, but you can always pause.

How are you doing Sandra?

And those words sound so simple to say, that's okay. But boy, that is really hard. That is really hard.

If you don't truly feel like you've come into that acceptance, there will still, you'll, there might be resentment, there might be anger, like she was mentioning, and those aren't necessarily sustainable emotions to have every time you're encountering these.

Like, I don't think it was, but there was, I don't know, even if it's a boundary, but what I'm trying to say is basically when I'm at an event or hanging with friends or things like that, and I feel myself like oh, I think I'm ready to go.

But in the past I've just stayed I've stayed until almost like the last one... almost I guess if you want to call it like FOMO or like some sort of thing that I'm like missing out on something and not wanting to miss out on that then I have like forced myself to stay even though my body and my feeling is like, oh, I think I'm ready to go and I've definitely... I've definitely I feel like I've done a lot more work to be like, no, I'm going to go home now. And that's fine. I'm at my limit.

Or I used to have like three or four things scheduled in one day of extracurricular activities. And I think that does probably come from my parents a little bit of being always busy and don't waste time, don't always be productive, always be doing something. And these days I notice when like I'm out and about and I do one event and I'm like, this is good, but there's like still time left in the day and I'm like, well, I could maybe add on this other thing too.

I have that pause where I'm like, wait. I don't think I actually need to add another thing to my day. I can go home and building a Lego set sounds nice. So I think just continuing to gather that type of data to feel more, even more confident and being able to make those decisions without any sort of like regret or yeah, resentment or anything like that.

I just have struggled with that so much because a I just hate I hate leftovers And I hate eating the same thing and that sounds so privileged because it is but feeling not so bad and guilty on just saying, like, I don't need to eat this like I'm... I'm done. I've had it. I've enjoyed it. It's also probably gone bad. I'm not going to force myself to eat this for the 6th day and managing that because food, I think, is such a big part of the culture, but also not being wasteful, right?

And there's figuring out how I can do that... without feeling so, so guilty about it, because I do.

I think that's the other important thing to remember is that things can evolve and change and that's okay.