Therapy for First and Second Generation Adults
You Are Fluent in Two Lives
You switch between your two lives so fast you stopped noticing years ago.
A different voice, different jokes, a different amount of yourself.
On Monday, you are the most composed person in the conference room, and Tuesday morning you are at a specialist’s office translating for your mother because she doesn’t trust the interpreter.
By Friday, you are tired in a way that sleep doesn’t fix, and you can’t explain it, because on paper the week went well.
You Won’t Be Starting from the Beginning with Me
I came to the United States from Iran as a child, and I teach in a graduate marriage and family therapy program where positionality is part of what I train clinicians to notice.
The work has two halves.
We put language to what has gone unspoken, which sounds simple and isn’t, because some of this has never been said out loud in either language.
And we work with what your body has been doing all along, because the alertness of never being fully at ease anywhere lives in your shoulders and your breathing long after you stop registering it.
The Word Comes Slower Than You Expect
You end a call with your family and something stays with you for ten minutes afterward, and the day goes on around it.
It has gone unnamed in both of your languages for as long as you can remember.
So we try a word for it. The first one lands wrong, and so does the second, and each wrong one narrows the space around the right one.
That is slower work than it sounds like from here, and it is the part that actually moves things.
You Get One Hour Off From the Job
What changes first is small and easy to miss.
You get one hour in the week where nobody in the room needs you to render anything for anyone.
One room where no translation is required.
The tally stops there.
You Don’t Have to Keep Translating Yourself
This isn’t the kind of thing that resolves because another year goes by. It resolves when someone finally defines it with you. Most people are surprised how quickly it moves once that happens.
Book a free 15-minute call, and we’ll talk about what living between two places has cost you and whether this work fits. Fifteen minutes, no cost, no obligation to continue.
Reach me at (805) 635-2153. I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California, and sessions are by video anywhere in the state.
Start with 15 Minutes on the Phone
Before you commit to anything, you tell me roughly what is going on. I ask a few questions. Then I tell you honestly what I think, including whether I am the right person for it.
If I am not, I will try to point you toward someone who is, and I would rather do that in fifteen minutes than in six weeks. You are also interviewing me.
We will talk about what is not moving, and what it would take to move it.