Immigrant Anxiety In The Therapy Room

Immigration fear can take over your whole nervous system even when you’ve “done everything right.” Today we talk honestly about that reality from both sides of the couch: as therapists and as first-generation immigrants navigating the same headlines, policy shifts, and threat-to-belonging that our clients bring into session. 

We dig into the mental health patterns that show up under immigration stress: hypervigilance, news spirals, anger, helplessness, and the grief that resurfaces years after your own paperwork is settled. We also unpack why certain phrases sting so much, like calling immigrant panic an “overcorrection,” and why “just go back” ignores the truth that many of us have two homes and a deep desire to live life on our own terms. Along the way, we name the complicated mix of privilege and reversibility, and how guilt can push people into silence instead of connection. 

From a clinical lens, we share ways to support immigrants without pathologising survival. That includes reflective listening, carefully chosen language, and distress tolerance skills offered with compassion. We also explore community as a protective factor: solidarity across different immigration statuses, signaling safety, and the lighthouse metaphor for becoming a steady presence when the world feels chaotic. The takeaway we keep returning to is simple and hard: immigrant life is not just paperwork, and we deserve space for both pain and joy. 

If this resonates, subscribe, share the show with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more people searching for immigrant mental health support and therapy for immigrants can find us.

Notes: A 1-hour workshop about Immigration and Mental Health led by Gitika: https://pacificnorthwestces.com/on-demand-ces-and-passes/ols/products/1-ce-cultural-awarenesscompetency-leaving-home-to-come-home-immigration-and-mental-health-with-gitika-dr-g-talwar-phd-recorded-july-2025-nasw-conf-19-25-159

A 3-hr workshop about Immigration and Mental Health led by Gitika: 

https://www.constantedu.com/courses/immigration-and-mental-health-immigration-to-homecoming

Thanks for listening! we would love to hear from you, write to us, 

Your hosts, 

Malika & Gitika 

Malika is the Founder of Ik Aas Counseling, know more at https://malikabains.com/ 

Gitika is the Founder of Pranh Healing & Wellness, know more at https://www.pranhwellness.com/

Transcript

Welcome And Podcast Mission

Gitika 0:57

Hi Malika. Hi Gitika. I'm well. Welcome to episode three of the Desi Couch. Yes. That feels good.

Speaker 1 1:12

Yes. So for those of you who are listening to us for the first time, Basie Couch is a podcast that is about all things South Asian. It's a podcast where we talk about culture, mental health, and we talk about the secrets that our community sometimes holds inside. And I wish we would talk about more.

Gitika 1:36

Yes. And that's our main aim to just find some space that we can share those stories and talk about the challenges that are happening right now. Even right now, not even a generational thing. Just to bring your attention back to those complexities that we face. For sure. For sure.

Speaker 1 1:56

So what would you say we're talking about today, Malika? I know we've talked about it so often. So I'm just wondering, how would you describe what we're about to talk about today?

Bringing Clinical Hats To Immigration

Gitika 2:06

So the way I see it is that in the last episode, we did a general dive into immigration experiences. What type of immigrations are there, and how each of them is different from the other, and others' perspective, and just the kind of unique experience it is to be an immigrant in any country and being focused on in the US. But then today I thought maybe we can kind of let put on our clinical hats and just kind of focus on how do we approach that topic of helping inner sessions to how do we figure out a way to help the clients tolerate distress that's connected to the current environment, the current political changes, and the threat that they face towards their sense of belonging in this country or even sense of residency in this country? So, how do we show up as therapists? What kind of toes do we bring into the sessions when we are dealing with a topic that is so prominent in today's world while we try and manage our own emotions, being immigrants ourselves having our own thoughts and feelings about what's happening? How do we manage our own feelings and hold that space while interacting and being that grounding energy for a client who is struggling with similar or even worse situation in regards to their immigrant experiences right now?

Speaker 1 3:51

Yeah, for sure. I think one of the things that always strikes me about immigration is that no matter when you listen to this podcast, of course, we are recording this in 2026. But I sense whenever you listen to this podcast, I won't be surprised if immigration continues to be a really polarizing issue or a really salient issue in the news, where sometimes people are talking about things that are happening to immigrants, and there is this general understanding that places want to welcome immigrants or places really want less immigrants. So there is always this fight between pro-immigrant people and the anti-immigrant people. So no matter where we are in history, I won't be surprised if what we talk about today will still be alive. And of course, I think as Malika and I talk about this issue today, and we talk about it as therapists, and how our immigrants selves come into the room and how we support our immigrant clients, and it's not just techniques and strategies, but overall, what is the practice of being immigrants, serving immigrants, and surviving immigration when there is so much tension between pro-immigration, anti-immigration, pro-immigrant, anti-immigrant surviving?

News Spirals And Mental Health Fallout

Speaker 1 5:17

Yeah. For sure.

Gitika 5:20

It's it's I think it's just so complicated. And I went through my own that distress in the beginning. I was sitting, I was going to say beginning year, beginning months of this year. And the thing is, it's still March 31st, obviously. It's still in the beginning, and it feels like it has been 2026 forever.

unknown 5:45

Yeah.

Gitika 5:46

Starting from the first week of January. It's it's that stress has been such in such an integral part of it. In at work and then outside work. So there were there was a time where I felt so lost in that chaos, my internal chaos regarding my own feelings about what's going on. Kind of really feeling hyper-focused towards needing to know what's going on. I need to know. I was so hooked on to the news channels and what's happening, finding credible news, what's happening in the local communities. And I went into that hyper-focus mode, and that affected me and my mental health, and how much I wasn't letting any other perspective come in to what I was wanting to focus on, which was becoming very it was anxiety, it was uncertainty, it was anger, it was helplessness. It was just all of those feelings, but amplified. But that was a whole journey that I had to go through. So I'm I'm also curious if that has been your experience as well.

Speaker 1 7:18

Yeah. I think for me it was it started in 2025 when a lot of immigration policies were changing, or new memos were coming out and more things were being discussed. And I was an immigration activist between 2018 and 2022, quite actively involved in immigration activism in the US. So I used to be working on in I used to be going to Congress in Washington, DC, meeting Democrats and Republicans and working on immigration policy and very specific immigration policies. And I had a lot of experience from that time of watching how policies are made, influenced, enacted, and all of that. So in 2025, when immigration policies were again being discussed, there were potential alterations, and clients were coming in discussing it. I realized there were details that I was not familiar with. And I remembered also as I was trying to support clients in understanding the implications of a few things. I was forgetting some details that I knew from the, you know, front and back so well when I was an activist and I was actively dealing with a lot of immigration stuff of my own. And I remember when I was working with these clients, we eventually moved on from talking about immigration and we started talking about other aspects of their life as well. But I remember I used to come out of those sessions just feeling so sad. And I I it was funny, I'm I'm able to say this now, but at that time I couldn't understand. Yeah, my client was fine towards the end of the session. Why am I still feeling so sad? And I realized it was this grief that was coming up again, and that once my immigration issue got sorted out, I was just, oh, put this on the side, put it on the shelf, put it in a deep freezer. Maybe we don't want to look at this again. Yeah. Suddenly here I was with clients talking about things that I thought I had worked through, but the grief came up again, and the pain came up again, and that fear. And then that fear comes up, and then you also at some point put the fear aside and say, okay, and there are all these other things going on in my life. Because that is true too. You know, life also continues that you're still having babies, you're still falling in love, you're still thinking about marriage, you're still thinking about your parents, you're thinking about a lot of things. So I think that a lot of that 2025 on, I mean, you know, I feel immigration stuff is always around, but I noticed it particularly in 2025 that there was this grief that really hit me that I thought I had I thought I was okay, but when are you ever okay? You know.

Gitika 10:32

Yeah. It's like that says that you're right about you know, the life moves on, the life continues, there are things that you need to pay attention to, but then those emotions are always gonna stay alive until something happens that triggers those emotions, and you're gonna feel them all over again. And I I understand that grief returning because it's but it must have felt it's happening again. Yeah. And just kind of, you know, reviewing those same memories either through the sessions or even later on, yeah, it brings things up to our working memory. For sure, for sure.

Grief Returning Through Client Work

Speaker 1 11:15

Yeah, and I'm wondering about what has typically been helpful for you as a therapist who is also a first-generation immigrant. What have you noticed you're able to hold space for in a very nuanced way that you sometimes, you know, and and this is not to criticize our colleagues or anything, but right things people you've noticed and tend to miss about immigration, but it takes a first-generation immigrant who's also a therapist to say, hey folks, this thing.

Gitika 11:50

I think it's just that it was it's just that whatever is going on in my head when I watch the news and the kind of panic that the news is creating within our families and ourselves, within with my spouse or with my parents, I'm dealing with it. It's a very active thing in my life where the conversations are happening every day. It's not just that me watching the news and I'm distant from it. I'm watching something. It's that it is happening. I'm experiencing it as well as I talk to my therapist friends, as I talk to my families, my cousins who are in this country, and they're feeling that same threat. So, you know, that degrees of separation is not there. It's something that I feel threatened by right now as well, and my parents and my spouse and my sibling and my cousin. So it's it's very much actively experienced. And when you know how that feels and the fear that you feel because of the threat, when you are really aware of that and you show up in a session and you know a client's background, you know their active struggle with immigration. I feel, I feel of course we're gonna talk about this. Hey, are you okay? There are sessions where it's been the very first thing. Are you how are you? And my client knows exactly why I'm asking them, how are they? Wow. There's no context needed. And and I say, How are you? and they're like, you know. Okay, how has it been for you? And it's it's so crazy that there's so many less words exchanged, but we know what's being talked about, we know the hubbiness that this topic brings in, and just also literally say solve the fear that the clients feel if they're not surrounded by a lot of other immigrants. If it's if it's an immigrant person who's surrounded by a lot of um people who are from this country, have been in this country for years, it's very hard for that majority population to understand the panic and the threat and the uncertainty and the anxiety that creeps up. So sometimes that can leave an immigrant person feeling feeling confused about their own reaction towards what's going on, feeling that they are overreacting, that they could just go logical about this. They could, they just know it's fine. They have their paperwork, it's okay, it's gonna be okay. And sometimes there is that little self-critical and self-judgment that I'm being too much. So that experience, personal experience of knowing that even if you have your ducks in row and everything's fine, but still there is this unexplained fear that we are having to deal with every day, and normalizing that for someone who's showing up in the session. And there was a time where I had to do a personal disclosure that this is happening. I am having active conversations with my family members about their documentation. What do they need to carry? Who are they gonna call if God forbid something happens? It's it's not something that's maybe one or two people are doing just a theoretical framework. No, this is a household conversation that's happening within the families, and that really made the client feel heard and just kind of you see the weight, okay. It's real, you know.

Speaker 1 15:46

You know, yeah, I think that pace in particular, right? To be assured, this is not an overreaction, that this is self-preservation, this is this is vigilance, and at the heart of it, vigilance is designed for us to protect ourselves, yeah, and there are ways in which you as an immigrant are being careful, are being vigilant. That is not it's it's very justified. Yeah. And sometimes I remember I was at a workshop about immigration and mental health, and I've been trying to do workshops on immigration and mental health myself, you know, being a resource person. So I am organizing the workshop and offering information and all of that. That was one way that I moved from my activism took on this new form that I started talking about immigration and mental health and how do we understand the unique needs of immigrants. Right. So I was at a workshop that was actually being done by some other colleagues who I really trust, and they were talking about immigration and mental health, and I really appreciated what they had to say. And I realized for the first time I was in a group where I was audienced. So I got to be a participant and speak to others about my experience without worrying about how they'll be impacted by that experience, you know, because when you're a when you're the teacher of a workshop, you have to make sure that you're sort of entering everybody's understanding, and no matter how simple a question is, you're answering it in a way that will be really helpful and all of that. But sometimes when you're a participant in a workshop, you can be a little more honest, you can be a little more raw, and you don't have to worry about taking care of people as much.

Validation, Disclosure, And Immigrant Fear

Speaker 1 17:38

And I remembered how many feelings came up for me as I heard people asking different questions. They were all well-meaning questions. But I remembered somebody used the term overcorrection when they were talking about how immigrants sometimes respond to news about things, change in immigration policy, or let's say somebody's here on an employment-based something, and then they are, oh no, I have to find a job in a different country, I need to get out of here. Yeah. And how there is the news about layoffs was creating this panic, understandably. Immigrants were talking about how to move to Canada, whatever. And somebody called it an overcorrection. And I remembered feelings so there's so many feelings. And I just said, you know, that's me. That's me. This overcorrecting person, so to speak, overcorrecting whenever we used to yeah, it and I'm just, you know, even as I'm saying all this. That's the crazy thing, Malika. That oh god, I'm not even going to finish my sentence here. But even as I'm saying all this, and how much privileged that is, yes, that I have paperwork. Yeah, and yeah, that's such a privilege in itself. Right. And if if that privilege is reversible, right? Your paperwork, your renewal doesn't happen, yeah, that is reversible. I I'm just wondering about you know, all the people who have been worried about actively getting deported. Yes. Literally waiting for that documentation from your lawyer. Yeah, can we can we halt this in any way? Yeah. So yeah, you know, so as I want to go into my race, there's a part that holds back and says, think about your privilege. I know.

Gitika 19:37

It's so hard. It's so hard to it's so hard to find words. It's so hard to even allow yourself to feel anxious and feel sad. We continue to wanting to acknowledge our own feelings, our own loss, and at the same time, I feel so guilty to even express that I'm feeling anxious, that I'm feeling angry, I'm feeling threatened, because I have this giant privilege of having the documentation that's needed to be here. Yeah. If this is the amount of intensity of emotions I feel with having my paperwork, what are what is someone going through who is really waiting to hear back from the lawyer, to hear back from their work, from their employers, from their family to make sure what is their next step? How can they continue to stay with their family? How do they not be separated? How do they still feel the right to live in this country? How do they feel it's okay for them to advocate for themselves? Right. I and all of that it inhibits it makes me doubt. If I can even be allowed to feel that sense of anxiety and grief. And that yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 21:09

And I wonder whether that is where the where the work is for us as a community too, right? That we do both, that we acknowledge our privilege and we recognize that our privilege affords us some protections, but the feelings we end up having are opportunities to build more solidarity within our communities. That is I can feel this anxiety as someone with paperwork, can I use that to extend solidarity with people who wow don't? And at the same time, even with people who don't have their paperwork, there is profound work that everyone is doing to center light.

Gitika 21:56

Yeah.

Speaker 1 21:57

The heart of it when you're working to continue to live in a country where everybody else, I mean where many other people might say, My God, if it's so difficult, why don't you just go back? Oh my god. Yes. And it's so painful one to be told that. And then the other thing is that sometimes we're missing how this is such a such a desire to live life on your own terms. That if you're not harming anyone and hurting anyone, and you are moving forward in wholesome human ways, then to be told that it might be easier for you to simply leave. Imagine what this person must be needing if they are wishing to continue to live in their own life rather than uprooting themselves again because they've already done that. We have already done that. And you're showing up in ethical human ways. To constantly be told that you should just end this. Just end it.

Gitika 23:02

Right. And it's it's that it's that feeling that you're you're being viewed as if you're choosing to tolerate this, as if you have a choice. Yeah. Oh you could oh you have a free will. You can go back. You can go back to your home country and you don't have to deal with any of this. But what about the choice that I want a better life for myself? And that's why I came here. And I want this life to be better. I don't want to go back and go back to my home country. I have two homes now. Coming back to that conversation, this is my home, and I want this to be better for me. Why can't this be better for me when everything that I'm doing is not harming anyone? Why can't this be okay in the life that I want? What is wrong with me wanting this life and at the same time acknowledging that it is really difficult? It is really difficult. It's you know, once it's being said, oh, you're choosing this, then you're not allowed to talk about the depressing aspects of it. No, why can't both the sides be true? And it is true. And that's where you s you come from in the sense that you mentioned people, if people can just hold space for both the sides of a coin rather than, oh, if you choose to be here, then you should be very happy with what's going on and you shouldn't complain because this is something, this is a privilege that you're getting, and you're supposed to be grateful for it. Continue to be grateful for it. Continue to be grateful that you get to live here. It's not gonna come easy, but that's okay. You know that, right? If you want easy, go back home.

Speaker 1 24:49

And the assumption is that one thing is easy and the other is not, or whatever. Right. Also, I'm thinking about what we were also reflecting on when we acknowledged our privilege. Yes. That we are using this privilege also to break the silence on something that often does not get talked about. Because somewhere, I don't know if it's a South Asian thing or if it's a global thing, but there is this assumption that if you have feelings about something, either do something about it or just keep quiet. So sometimes we don't talk about feelings, difficult feelings that you can't do anything about. Because if you can't do anything about it, why talk about it? And we are somewhere, Madhika and I are really holding the space for hey, if you talk about it, then over time we will figure out a way forward that centers our humanity, centers our health, centers our wellness. While things continue to be the way they are, you know, just the emotion of grief. When we have grief over something that ends or something that changes, it's not as though grieving will change the outcome. But when we grieve together, when we talk together, you know, they say a lot in my family, dil hal kawut. Your heart feels lighter when you talk about things. And somewhere, if our privilege is giving us the opportunity to use this mic, to use this platform to speak about immigration, we don't do that. And maybe because I'm no longer in survival mode, I am not waiting for the next letter from my lawyer. I am some more grounded space where some of my worries are something that could happen, but I am mostly protected from a lot of things. Can I use the safety to the benefit of this conversation? As opposed to meaning since I'm safe, I have no business talking about it. So I'm constantly asking people in danger to keep speaking up. They have more things to do than educate people, you know? Yeah. So I'm saying, hey, I'm I'm using my privilege right now to shoulder the responsibility of this conversation that needs to be happening more in our communities. And maybe it starts here.

Gitika 27:13

It starts here because if we are the one holding that privilege, sometimes with privilege comes shame and spelling. That because I am protected, I wouldn't even know how to talk about it. I may offend someone, I may say something that could hurt the other person. So that shame brings on the silence that I would rather just, I'm just gonna avoid this topic and not discuss it because I am not going to make a fool of myself. I'm not going to put myself in a situation that I don't know anything about. And that's where the ignorance comes in. So it's, oh, I don't know. I have privilege, then I feel shame about having that privilege. And then you withdraw because it's so hard to feel that shame. So we withdraw from that whole topic. And when we withdraw, the cost of withdrawing is that we lose contact with people who are actually going through those things. And if there was a room, if there was room for us to deal with the shame, we could have utilized that privilege to really build some sort of connection with the person who's going through. Because the very first reason you even acknowledge your privilege is because you must have some sort of empathy and awareness that, oh, I'm not feeling what this person's feeling. Oh, wait, why am I not feeling all privilege? And then you went into the spiral of shame. And what do I even have to say? But it starts with empathy and acknowledgement and awareness. And even when we are talking to someone who we know is struggling with the immigration concerns that you have never struggled with, voicing out as it is internally for you that I feel, I feel a lot of shame as I approach this conversation with you because I I may not have all the right information. I may not, I may fumble with my words, I, but I I really want to know if you're okay. It's the curiosity and the compassion. Curiosity and compassion of really understanding where the other person is and seeing, can you hold space for them? So that they can talk about what's going on in their lives and you can learn from them if that's what you want to do, but you can also learn on your own, do your research. But hold space. It's that showing support, emotional support, and connection, so that we're not kind of disintegrating as a community because everyone's kind of going back into their own bubbles because we don't know how to show up in such a chaotic world right now.

Privilege, Shame, And Community Solidarity

Gitika 30:00

So another thing that reminded me was the No Kings protest. That's happening all over the country right now. With the No Kings protest, a lot of people who march in those protests are the ones who have a lot of protection. And just being able to acknowledge that, wow, this there are people who don't need to be advocating for any of this, but they're doing it because of their community, because they opened themselves up to that compassion and curiosity for other people who are going through such a threatening time in their lives, and they want to do something about it. I that always humbles me so much just to see. Whenever I feel that I'm alone, that I'm isolated, which I felt during that time earlier in the months, when I was so hyper-focused on reading the news and oh my god, this is happening. I went into my own bubble. I wasn't talking to anyone, I was just consuming news and what's happening today, what's happening today. And then slowly, as I just began to talk about it, it made me feel less isolated. I I garnered some strength by seeing how people in Minnesota were dealing with it. The kind of community connection that showed up in creating a system that was to protect their own community was so inspiring, and that brought some safety. Hold on, I'm not alone. I'm not alone in this. And then I started reaching out to my own family members, to my friends, my therapist friends, my immigrant friends, just to kind of get in touch with the community.

Speaker 1 31:54

Yeah, yeah, and I'm realizing also how much of safety there comes from knowing you're not alone and finding ways to really highlight all the spaces that are available to you. I always think of this lighthouse metaphor. I don't know if there are lighthouses in the South Asian region, I have not seen them, so but I saw lighthouses much more after moving to the US. And I love that the lighthouse always just stands tall and the light is there, and the ship knows the lighthouse's presence so it can make its way to the lighthouse for safety or whatever. And I sometimes think about how can we as people serve as lighthouses as well. So it's not necessarily that you keep going to people and telling asking them what they need, but it is sometimes also showing up in a way that lets you know, lets people know that you are a safe presence. So whether it is that you name the fact that you are an immigrant on your profile, or you happen to name that you work with immigrants or something that, and there is this the importance of signaling safety. Not just through your words, but through your actions, and some of your actions in therapeutic spaces, whether it's individual therapy or group therapy, comes from acknowledging the importance of hyper-vigilance. Hypervigilance is sometimes you know treated as a negative symptom of it's too much. Hypervigilance, you know, but to recognize the strength of vigilance also, especially for those of us who've experienced oppression from system, such as when you experience oppression from an immigration system, we are justifiably quite vigilant, and to recognize that as a strength while holding space for how can you continue to make space for other experiences in your life as well? So you know how Manika you were talking about there was news, and then there was this desire to eventually rebuild community as well, so that both things could be true: news as well as community building. And it's when you wear shoes and walk on the street, right? The streets quality may not change, but your shoes are protecting you from the streets. So it's that that what are the buffers that you're creating in your life so that the impact of the stress is not constantly eroding you, whether it is you looking up at the sky every now and then, whether it is what is whether it is you're going to pray, but something that keeps giving you hope. And how can you, as a therapist or as some or someone who's providing support to an immigrant person, how can you make room for both and without having to minimize the stress connected to immigration, but also make room for the life that's beyond immigration because you know joy is an act of liberation as

Lighthouses, Buffers, And Distress Tolerance

Speaker 1 35:11

well. So, how do you continue to access joy and don't allow the system to take that away from you?

Gitika 35:16

Right. Because it's a there are those trauma responses where we completely withdraw from the topic, and that's when as a therapist, we may have to insert some of those topics back into the session to make sure you're not going into avoidance, because if you go into avoidance, then there's a sudden outburst which creates that crisis. So, how do you find a balance in your therapy sessions? If a, if uh, if there is someone that you're working with who you know has a tendency to avoid things that stress them out, how are you going to take the need to check in about it and hold space and letting the person know that, hey, I'm holding space for us to come back to this topic because I know this is an ongoing stressor in your life. So, how how are we doing it? And then there are other set of people who can go overboard, who can hyperfocus, who can be so close to the conflict that it's hard to see the light. So, how do you again nudge them towards the light? And that's where you come in with your distress tolerance skills. And it's important how to present those distress tolerance skills. You know, it has to be from a lens of compassion, it has to be a lens of again holding privilege to even be in a space where you can offer distress, distress tolerance skills to someone who's struggling with such a sense of safety, active sense of safety right now. So, how do you soften the edges when you're discussing psychoeducation in the session so that it doesn't feel whatever a client is presenting is is dysfunctional, is a symptom. It's it's not dysfunctional, it's an appropriate reaction to what the stressor is right now. For sure. So validating that and how I it could be very much about reflective listening and just compassionate somebody of what they're going through and really kind of just saying that while all of this stands true, how can we make some moments of uh in your life where you're looking at the sky when you're looking at the lighthouse? How do we make moments of that? Can we do that so that you're able to be with your child? You're able to be present at your work, so that you're able to be in good health, so that your health is not deteriorating. For sure. Because an immigrant life is not just about immigration paperwork. Yeah.

Speaker 1 38:05

Yeah. Yeah, at the heart of it, maybe that's what the bottom line of this episode is that immigrant life is not just about paperwork and holding life and paperwork in an integrated way that doesn't make pain seem a symptom, but more of a natural response to a very difficult and often traumatic situation. Yeah.

Pain And Joy Can Coexist

Speaker 1 38:36

So I hope is that by listening to this episode, it gave you some food for thought, maybe mirrored something you may have experienced, or it could be the beginning of ongoing conversations about how immigration impacts the mental health of your family, your clients, your community, and what are ways in which you can keep showing up for we can keep showing up for each other across privileges and not centering shame and guilt, but centering connection and wholehearted, compassionate listening.

Gitika 39:14

Yes, compassionate listening versus apologizing. I think that just keeps coming to my mind. So how do we find a way to not put another tag on an immigrant person who is going through this? It I know we need to wrap up, but it reminded me of that overcorrection word that was used with my I that makes me cringe. That makes me feel I don't even I don't even know how to express. I it makes me feel angry, it makes me feel helpless, it helpless that how do I even how do I explain this to you? Yeah. Yes, and that's where the comes in. It's the nuance of us living an immigrant life while working with immigrants. And where naturally our terminology changes, our word changes, our language changes to to make the space more welcoming and not look at a person uh as something to be fixed.

unknown 40:21

Yeah.

Gitika 40:22

It is how life is, it's an immigrant life where going back to the very first thing, Gitika, that you mentioned, the immigrant life has its pain and it has its joy. Right. It's always gonna be that. There is gonna be pain and joy. So is everyone's life? So why are we supposed to just go choose our joy and go back to our home? Oh, you want joy and go back to your home. Why can't we just have the joy and the pain while living where we want to live? Yeah. Swear holy.

Speaker 1 40:54

So yes.

Subscribe, Resources, And Staying Connected

Speaker 1 40:56

Thanks so much, everyone, for listening for more conversations. This please can subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening. And we look forward to keeping in touch. Look at our show notes for resources from this episode, as well as ways to get in touch with us. If you ever want to call us, we would love that. Not call us, email us. Okay. But thanks so much for so well.

Gitika 41:23

Thank you, everyone. Thank you for staying connected with us. If you were there for the whole episode, we appreciate you so much. Thanks. Bye.