How hypnotherapy helped me reclaim my Asian American identity

This APIA Heritage Month, we’re talking about mental health because for too long, mental health has been stigmatized in our community. That’s why PS is shining a spotlight on mental health journeys from an APIA perspective and confronting the stigma around going to therapy, asking for help, and talking about how you’re feeling. Read the stories here.

I had never seen my mother so frightened and silent until the day a stranger shattered my sense of safety. When I was about 5 years old, I was pushing a cart outside a grocery store when a man appeared. He appeared to be holding an assault rifle. He pretended to shoot my mother and me, yelling at us to die and go back to “our countries.” No one came to our aid while the man feigned attack. As a child, I knew fight or flight was not an option. I couldn’t run fast enough to leave my mother behind and run, and I certainly couldn’t fight this man. My body absorbed the overwhelming fear that I might die.

After my mother got me safely in the car and locked the doors, I asked her why he tried to kill us and if I should call the police. She didn’t explain anything and just ignored my questions. We never spoke about that incident again. It was an unspoken rule in my family. Some hurts are better left unacknowledged and buried deep inside.

In elementary school, I was always the only Asian girl in my grade. Many white families didn’t invite us to get-togethers, and my parents were strict with me meeting friends only once a week so that I could focus on my studies. Not only did I look different from my classmates, but I was expected to conform to different cultural standards than the majority of my community. Knowing that I was facing challenges that my classmates would never experience left me feeling extremely distressed and hopeless. I realized at an early age that I was not safe, that my parents did not always protect me, and that some people didn’t believe I belonged in the place our family called home.

Growing up in a traditional Vietnamese family meant that I had to keep my mouth shut and bottle up my emotions or I would face worse consequences. Keeping it inside caused more trauma to my body. When I wasn’t in class, swimming team practice, or debate practice, I wanted to be in bed. The world didn’t exist when I was in bed. My parents interpreted my behavior (which I now recognize as a symptom of depression) as ungratefulness. They would scold me and tell me that it was worse growing up in Vietnam. I tried to tell my parents several times that I was feeling depressed, but they ignored me. “Depression” was a word that wasn’t in our family’s English-Vietnamese dictionary. I begged my parents to take me to therapy, but they thought of therapy as something only the privileged, underprivileged, and pretentious got. My parents refused to acknowledge depression as a health disorder. So when I went to college, I knew it was time to get professional help and support. It was becoming so hard to be happy.

Many of the therapists I worked with in college and over the years afterwards gave me a safe space to vent. They validated my feelings, which helped me after a long history of gaslighting from my family. Some offered coping strategies; one encouraged me to cry and “let it all out” in every session. They each helped ease my symptoms of depression, but none of them addressed the root of my pain.

In 2021, I stumbled across a Yelp review of Awaken Ananda, a practice that specializes in healing through hypnotherapy while incorporating other elements such as bodywork, inner child healing, energy work, and spiritual awareness.

I was skeptical about working with a hypnotherapist at first, so I looked into it further. I learned that hypnotherapy isn’t mind control or manipulation, and it’s nothing like a fancy Las Vegas hypnosis show. According to the American Association of Medical Professionals, clinical hypnotherapy is a technique that puts individuals into a deep state of relaxation that makes them more receptive to suggestions and allows them to access their subconscious. I also felt comfortable working with Awaken Ananda founder Priya Rakhi, who is Asian American. I knew she would understand my family’s stigma against mental health and the repressive upbringing I experienced.

Going into my first session with Priya, I was nervous. I am an overthinker. I thought there would be no way Priya could get me into a meditative state and make the session a success. I was wrong.

Every session with Priya is a little different. Priya usually starts by asking me where in my body I feel discomfort. Sometimes it feels like a lump in my throat, sometimes like tightness in my chest, and the worst is when it feels like there’s a hole in my heart. Priya asks me to keep my focus on that part of my body. At this point, I begin to enter a meditative state. My mind becomes quiet and I’m there with focus. Our real work begins.

During one session, I felt like lava was engulfing my body. Priya asked me if magma could transform into anyone or any place, what or where would it be? The lava inside me took me back to childhood. I saw my inner child, my younger self, walking around. I remembered the pink carpet, the cactus in the corner, and the old metal futon from our old house. I was about the same age as he was when he attacked us.

As Priya asked me questions about my childhood in that deeply relaxed state, my inner child spoke. I told her what “home” meant to the little girl in me: a family that was excluded from their community, a family that pushed traditional values ​​on a daughter who wanted to fit in, and a family that failed to protect her from the harsh realities of being Asian in America.

Hypnotherapy uncovered repressed emotions and buried memories, and as we continued, I saw my younger self pick up a red petrol can. Priya asked me what my inner child was doing, and I said, “My younger self is about to set the house on fire.” She asked, “Do you want her to do that?”

Before I could say “absolutely not,” I saw my young self sprinting through my childhood home, pouring gasoline everywhere. I watched in horror as layers of my subconscious finally did what it had wanted for so long — letting its depression, sadness, anger, and pain speak, letting its revenge and retribution take hold and burn it all down. In talk therapy, I spoke from a state of numbness. In hypnotherapy, I was completely in my body and could feel.

As I visualized flames consuming my childhood home, something shifted. The unsettling image brought me a sense of relief I had never felt before. All that had been trapped inside finally had a way out, like a pressure valve letting out steam.

I let the little girl inside me burn everything down, the little girl who couldn’t resist or run away, who had to push aside painful memories for so long and pretend everything was okay. I allowed that fire to consume my home until there was nothing left.

I opened my eyes and Priya asked me how I was feeling.

“That was a lot,” I said. “It gets better.”

When the session ended, I felt lighter. I no longer felt the weight of being the daughter of immigrants, which sometimes made me vulnerable in a new country. I was beginning to heal.

I’m not done yet. I still have a lot to unravel from the events of my childhood. But after refusing to face my trauma for so long, burning the “crime scene” helped me reclaim my power, agency, and right to heal. Instead of sleepwalking through life from the debilitating numbness that comes with depression, the fire woke me up. I finally feel free.

Crystal Bui is an Emmy-nominated Vietnamese American news reporter who has covered some of the biggest stories of the past decade, including the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the Atlanta spa shootings that left eight people dead, including six women of Asian descent. She is the author of the 2023 memoir “More to Tell,” which became an Amazon best-selling journalist biography.