Rethinking Resilience
AANHPI Youth, Mental Health, and What Isn’t Said
Written by Claudia Perez de Tagle, May 2025
For many Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander cultures, caring for others is emphasized. Compassion is woven into daily life — shown through food, achievement, sacrifice, and loyalty. But it’s often directed outward. Toward elders. Toward expectations. Toward everyone except ourselves. While many are eager to give, caring for oneself – emotionally – is often misunderstood or minimized. Inward care — emotional honesty, rest, vulnerability — is rarely modeled, and often misunderstood as weakness or selfishness. Silence, on the other hand, is mistaken for strength. But silence isn’t safety.
Resilience, Reframed
According to The Asian American Foundation’s 2024 report, Beyond the Surface, nearly half of AANHPI youth scored above the threshold for moderate to severe depression. Yet many did not describe themselves that way. Clinical screenings told one story; their words told another. In many AANHPI households, youth learn early that “holding it in” is a form of respect; emotional restraint is part of being a good child. This gap is not about dishonesty — it’s about survival. It’s a skill that looks like strength from the outside, but often comes at the expense of internal peace.
We call AANHPI youth resilient. And they are. But the version of resilience often praised — quiet, high-achieving, emotionally restrained — is shaped as much by trauma as it is by strength. For generations, AANHPI families have carried the weight of war, colonization, migration, and systemic invisibility. They adapted to survive. Vulnerability was a luxury few could afford. That strength is real, but it’s also complicated. Without space to process pain, resilience becomes suppression.
True resilience includes rest. Recovery. Community. Room to say, “I’m not okay,” and still be held with respect.
When Trauma Lives in Habits
Unprocessed trauma doesn’t just live in memories — it often lives in habits, in silence, in the way we fill rooms with things we can’t let go of. Hoarding, often stigmatized, can be a response to scarcity, displacement, or grief. For some, it’s a way to hold on to stability. For others, it’s protection. Memory. Loss made visible.
It’s not about clutter — it’s about control. It’s about safety. It’s about history. And it’s wrapped in shame, especially when it’s never talked about. But if we see it with compassion, we can begin to understand these behaviors not as moral failures, but as trauma echoes that deserve attention, not judgment. This is not about blaming families or cultures for “being this way”. Many did what they knew and continued without the space to process their own emotions. Mental health wasn’t avoided because it wasn’t important — it was deprioritized because survival came first.
How to Carry On
Today’s youth are carrying inherited strength and inherited silence. It’s time to break the cycle not by rejecting it — but by expanding it. Making room for vulnerability and truth. Mental health shouldn’t require crisis. It should be part of everyday life — in how we talk to each other, how we care for ourselves, how we respond to silence with curiosity instead of fear. Healing begins in small moments, like showing up with presence, not perfection, with honesty, not solutions.
