Breaking Intergenerational Cycles: Asian Australian Parenting with Clinical Psychologist Vi Tran

🎁 Free Resource: Download your Breaking cycles, keeping culture: A guide for the Asian community PDF for deeper learning → HERE

In this episode, Asami speaks with Vietnamese Australian clinical psychologist Vi Tran, founder of The Middle Bridge Project, about parenting, identity, and the unspoken ways Asian parents show love. From the "cut fruit" metaphor to redefining what it means to be "good enough," this conversation offers compassion, insight, and reflection for Asian Australians navigating family, culture, and self-care with professional guidance.

🎧 You'll hear about: 

✅ How survival-based parenting patterns are passed down in Asian Australian families 
✅ Why "good enough" parenting looks different for Asian Australians today 
✅ Gentle ways to practise self-compassion and set boundaries with family 
✅ Working with culturally competent psychologists who understand Asian family dynamics 
✅ Breaking intergenerational trauma while preserving cultural values

 Watch the episode below or find us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!

💡 Episode Highlights:

• Vi's journey to parenthood during COVID as a Vietnamese Australian clinical psychologist
• Asian Australian parenting styles, cultural nuances, and moving beyond stereotypes
• Breaking cycles of guilt and self-criticism common in Asian families
• The "cut fruit" metaphor and reparenting yourself with cultural understanding
• Introducing The Cultural Compass values card deck for Asian Australians
• Finding mental health support that honours your cultural background

🧠 Key Takeaways from Vi: 

• "My parenting style is about attunement, noticing what my child is really asking for, even when the behaviour looks different."
• "That inner critic is so loud sometimes, telling me I'm not doing enough. I'm learning to hold myself with more compassion."
• "Cut fruit is such a simple but powerful metaphor, it's how our parents showed love, and it's also how we can show love to ourselves."

👤 About the Guest 

Vi Tran is a Vietnamese Australian clinical psychologist and founder of The Middle Bridge Project. She specialises in working with Asian Australians navigating family dynamics, cultural identity, and intergenerational patterns. Vi created The Cultural Compass, a values-based card deck designed to help people reflect on what grounds them in life.

🔗 Find Vi and other Asian Australian psychologists via the Asian Mental Health Practitioner List

🌐 Vi's Website: https://www.themiddlebridgeproject.com/  

📱 Instagram: @middlebridgeproject  

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If this episode helped you understand Asian Australian family dynamics, please subscribe and share to support other families navigating culture and mental health. 💛

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Transcript:

Asami: Hi, Vi. Thank you so much for joining us here today. It's lovely to have you in the studio and to meet you in person after all this time, hey? 

Vi: I know, I'm so excited and I'm really excited to be here, to have a conversation with you. I think shapes and sounds have been absolutely amazing in terms of community building and building a voice for Asian Australians. So that's so nice. Glad to be. Thank you. 

Asami: I'm really excited for our conversation today as we've been chatting in the studio, essentially every kind of question that we have, either whether it's from the community or whether it's mental health services, wherever it's coming from, I feel like everything has to do with Asian parents as like a hashtag almost like Asian parents or like in quotation mark Asian parents. So this episode, I'm going to ask you so many questions about parenthood. And your thoughts about parenting and all of that kind of stuff and mixed in with your experiences as well. I can just imagine that becoming a parent is a huge undertaking. It's not for everyone. And it's like completely life-changing, I assume, as a non-parent or as like a dog parent. It's the same. Is it the same? Yeah. I know like human parents don't really like that comparison, but anyway. How on earth did you prepare yourself for parenthood? 

Vi: It's, it's such a good question because how can anyone fully be prepared, right? We can, we can anticipate, we can study and I think as, as a psychologist who has worked with parents have, you know, have worked with adolescents and, and children have done, you know, their parent training, um, it s you know a lot of my friends do tell me, but it must be so easy. I'm like, no, no it is not easy, right. Because you, you can theoretically. Know something you can theoretically know and you can teach people it but until you experience it yourself I think it's completely different. So I guess for me during my pregnancy, listening to podcasts, I bought a book called Beyond the Bump which was written by a psychologist as well to mentally prepare myself and then I had all these issues with pregnancy, It was during COVID and all that. And I never read that book. 

Asami: It's still just there. 

Vi: It's still there and I read it I think in my first month of being a parent and I read maybe one chapter so and then I skim read it as as any therapist usually does with books they don't read and and so how I prepared for it I think talking a lot of people talking talking with a lot of friends but also reading stories and listening to stories but no matter how much I guess I heard or listened to stories parenting for me. Was very unexpected and it felt more like taking on a whole different identity that I didn't anticipate would feel or embody. Really? 

Asami: Is that like once the baby arrives or during your pregnancy? 

Vi: I think for me sitting on, so I had a plan, cesarean, and as soon as they injected, I can't remember what it's called in my back, the anesthetic, I like bored my eyes out and was like, oh, I think it's happening. I think we're taking this baby out now. I think this is time. And all the nurses were like, what's wrong? Are you hurt? Are you okay? I'm like, no, I thinks it's emotionally, it feels different, right? And I talk about embodying, it feels in my body too. Baby who is ours, my partner and I, and to see the baby grow through so many developmental kind of milestones. 

Asami: It really is a point when there's like a physical human. 

Vi: There's a physical human. Yeah. And I think you said it's like having a dog. I had it. We had a dog as well. Slightly different in that this, you know, this human is now the boss of the house. And you know we work around the baby, we work around the toddler and she still is the boss as a preschooler in the house.

MX in - Cross Eyed

Asami: In terms of parenting styles like just to give everyone listening a little bit of context, I'll give like a bit of background. And very, very broadly speaking, there's kind of four types of parenting styles like authoritative. Authoritarian, which is so similar. I don't know who decided on this. They're so similar, but they're actually very different. Authoritative is supposed to be the one where you have good boundaries, but you also communicate well. You're like strong, but firm, but also loving and warm. And then the one that's similar, authoritarian has a very different definition, which is like really focusing on discipline and like punishment. If the child doesn't do something well, then it's like, they might get punished by the parent. And then there's permissive, which is the parent that kind of lets the child do whatever they want. So permissiv, obviously. And then uninvolved, which just like not so interested in the child, which I think is probably the worst. But anyway, that's just my judgment. So these parenting styles originated in the 1960s by someone called Diana Baumrind. And she did all of her research about parenting styles on white middle-class families, heteronormative families as well. And then there was like a little bit of adaptation later on in the 1980s from Stanford Uni. They added another parenting style to make the four parenting styles. But essentially what's interesting to consider is that these parenting styles are still like really talked about and they're like real fundamental frameworks in how the mental health world conceptualizes and talks about parenting. 

MX out

A lot of the time, this authoritarian parenting, like the very strict parent one, I think it kind of gets intertwined with these real Asian parent stereotypes, like the tiger mom and. You know, like the Asian parents who only want their kids to get A pluses and all this kind of stuff. So my question to you V, because you are an Asian person, you're also a psychologist who, you know and you are a parent, what's your parenting style? Such a long-winded question. 

Vi: Yeah, no, I think that the foundation that you provided is really interesting. And I think for me, my parenting style, you know, I'd like to think that my parenting style is one that is probably a combination of multiple kind of worlds. It's there's no such thing as like perfect or, or being like the best or the good, good parent, Right, it's all the right parent, but it's thinking about... Obviously, do no harm, but what priorities or values do I want to prioritize within my relationship with my daughter? And that might change if I have another one, right? But with my daughter, what values do you want to instill?

And I say mindful in that conscious or conscious parent and that there will be ruptures and repair. So relationship and connections are probably really fundamental in my... Lens and intersections and also in a lot of the research that I've looked into, um, in helping children thrive and, and find a sense of autonomy in themselves. Right. 

And so my parenting style, I hope is taking a little bit of, you know, some of the unspoken love and messages I received from my parents, but also shifting to maybe a little more emotion kind of focused around Attrument. Not to say my parents weren't attuned, they were probably attuned in a different kind of way. But thinking about, you know, those four ones, I'm like, I don't know, it doesn't quite fully kind of fit sort of what I hoped to envision or embody as a parent. But it might be sort of the one around a more authoritative kind of soul if we were once at all. The good one, the best one. And I say I hope, right? I hope to be someone who is perceived in that kind of way, but also I think the perception of my daughter is probably most important to me in how she perceives how I show up in terms of how connected we are. 

MX in - Jazey

Asami: What do you mean by attuned?

Vi: Yeah, good question. So to be attuned is thinking about what cues is my child sending me. Right. So for example, um, I don't know where we're running, like to get ready for school and she's taking her sweet ass time, putting her shoes on and I'm sitting here going, we're going to be 10 minutes late. And she's like, mom, one more kiss, one more hug. And I'm like, Oh my God, it's boiling. Right. So in that moment I could flip and be like, this is the last time we're leaving. That's enough. Get out of here. Stop wasting mom's time. I need to go work too. Or I could pause. Maybe take a breath, think about what does she want right now? Why does she one another kiss when we're late? I think she probably wants, I think, she might miss me. Right. So reading underneath maybe what the behaviors that they're showing you and, and being curious, what else might be. And we're not mind readers. We can only be ever so curious about what that might be What is this child asking? What was this child, asking me, what is her messaging right now. And I think just doing this on purpose, but I think she probably even knows the concept of time, to be honest. But it's obviously frustrating me and there's something else that she wants right now. Yeah, well, connection seeking. Connection seeking, perhaps. 

MX out

Asami: I can imagine that just say you did not like lash out at your daughter, but you're like, come on, we're running late, get in the car. And then do you as a parent turn around at 11am later on in the day and being like, oh, I feel so bad. I feel sad. Do you do that? All the time. You beat yourself up about that. 

Vi: All the time, all the time. And I think that's a language that happens even to this day for myself. And especially maybe if I'm talking about more for maybe other Asian Australian parents who will naturally have very like guilt-inducing in a parent voice, voices or voices that are a bit more critical and then it becomes louder when you become a parent. So you're more harsh to yourself when things mess up, when things don't go your way. Who else do you blame? Yourself, right? And you get become harsh towards yourself. So in moments like this, I mean, you could eventually beat yourself up emotionally. Yeah. But where does that, where does go? You know, you go down this loop. 

Asami: I think that leads on to the question of like, that loop that is so easy to recreate if you're not really conscious about what you're doing, just because it's like so natural and if you are tired and if you like running late and all of these kinds of things, like do you have a story or an experience of you really noticing like, oh I did a really good of kind of breaking that cycle? 

Vi: When you say stories, I'm like, my mind just like emerges too many stories. Because when I think about like breaking a cycle, breaking a pattern, it often means that there's multiple occurrences of something similar that pops up. So there's all this like cultural conditioning and messages we receive from our parents, our experiences of culture, experiences of community or even from a lot of collectivistic kind of cultures, that says we put other people first, the group before me. 

So I think this pattern of the way that I talk to myself, the way that I might burn myself up by ensuring that I've cleaned the whole house before someone comes or ensure that I'm cooking every meal or cooking as much as I can for my daughter so she gets the most nutrients, which I saw mum doing a lot growing up, providing, home cooked meals every single day, showing up for us practically. If I'm not meeting that unrelenting expectation or need, then there's this default voice of like, have you done enough? Should you do more? You're not, you're not cooking enough. She's not getting any nutrients. But then you're also working and you have no time to cook properly or a fantastic meal every single night, so…

MX in - Early Bloomer

One of the things I come back and I still continue to try and shift and learn is that inner kind of self-talk around, you need to do more, you need to be better. You need to be better than the best in some ways. Because, because if you're not cooking X, Y, Z, then you're not a good mother, right? And I might not say that explicitly to myself, but there's some inkling of feeling not good enough. So intellectually... I might know, oh, this is not good for me to say this. Why am I so mean to myself? But then it still pops up. 

Asami: Yeah, and it's somewhere really deep in there. 

Vi: Like deeply seated. So I think a part of me breaking that is holding myself with a bit more self-compassion and redefining maybe what a good enough mother is for me, because I can't be cooking every day and then having two businesses on the side and, you know, trying to be there for everyone and and not yell at my daughter. So I'm gonna mess up, and people mess up and often it's easier to extend that to others than to ourselves. So a lot of, yeah, a lot, I guess, the deep kind of, you know, work for me is holding, holding compassion. For yourself, yeah. 

MX out

Asami: Very early days of your daughter being in this world, was your mom involved in those very early stages of your parenting? 

Vi: That's a great question. 

Asami: That picture for me. 

Vi: Yes. Very vivid. I'm getting flashbacks now. No, she's still involved in my daughter's care at the moment, but in a very different way. 

So when I gave birth was during sort of still the COVID kind of time, Omicron wave, lockdowns, all of that. So, but it did work to our advantage in that my partner and I, we had a lot of time with us three and figuring out and it was actually really lovely. Sort of being in this newborn phase with just us. And then you introduce the grandparents and then you hear more, I'd say, opinions, things you didn't ask for. And that was, I would say, that was probably quite activating for me. So things like, so my daughter had pretty severe eczema kind of growing up. Opinions from people around, oh, it's probably, you know, your breast milk, you should just put her on formula or. You know, you're not eating healthy enough, V, so your daughter has eczema or like, you know, or you're not feeding her enough. She's too skinny or, you know, like, so comments like this. And I look back and I kind of go, oh, yes, of course, Asian aunties and parents would say this. It's from a place of care, right? But in the moment, I'm like, like you know alarm bells go off and, and it is really activating because you then blame yourself. And the. Um, I think the self talk I spoke about earlier strengthens, right? Because you hear these, these messages, which doesn't explicitly say you're not good enough, but then you internalize that and you go, Oh, I don't think I'm good enough. Um, is that because like you're tired as well, like sleep-deprived, hormonal going through your own identity, um, transition, right. And it's a big adjustment period. Um, but mum was, yeah, mum was very supportive in terms of the practical things. Sorry. All the, you know, all the soups, the delicious, really healthy kind of broth. And also a big part of, I guess, mum and my sister is the care that they provide in that, you know, I'm in some ways very privileged to be able to lean on that support to be able to go back to work earlier as well. So, so the practical kind of care. And then, and then probably maybe the harsh kind of comments was me finding my voice to I'm gonna go mum. We shouldn't be talking like this to new parents, not just me, but to others. We're still trying to find our feet. Right. But that took, I think a lot for me to kind of voice and be like, it's not disrespectful if I speak up and I tell her to stop rather than me, I don't know, lashing out or being like, stop telling me what to do or whatever. 

Asami: How did those conversations go? Were they well received? 

Vi: They were met with silence, but I would say that is well received enough.

MX in - Jazey

Well, in my family, and I know in a lot of Asian families is a silence isn't necessarily negative or positive. It could be their indirect way of communicating and processing things, right. And then we'll see next time when I talk about, you know, feeding and see what happens. Does, you know, does mum maybe pause a little bit and not say the same things? Is she more intentional? And she, she is, she, respected that. 

And that might look very differently. I think that was just one dialog. It could be other ways of maybe just avoiding that conversation entirely or limiting one-on-one feeding specifically at mum's house to have those conversations. Not so much avoidance, but setting more indirect, maybe boundaries. 

MX out

Asami: I think that's really great advice for so many people, not just in parenting, but in anything, like you don't have to have a verbal confrontation as such, but there are other ways in which you can set your own boundaries. 

Vi: Right. Yeah. You don't have to always use words. You can speak the unspoken words that our parents spoke and speak kind of their language. Right. And they might actually understand that better as well, rather than, you know, if you look at boundary setting books that are probably more Westernized, it's like assertive communication, say no, right. It doesn't have be like that in, for, for people like us, actually, it could be adapted and different. 

Asami: Do you feel like you had to test and trial this? 

Vi: Yeah, yeah, and lucky for me, I have older siblings. Okay. So they might have done a lot of the testing for me in the trial and error, and then I kind of take what I like, and then use- Ooh, I see what works. And, you know, cousins, friends, right? So they're not, I hope, I guess, when I share my stories from the intersection of a parent and a psychologist, they're not new stories, but they're stories that a lot of people. May resonate with because they're probably everyday parent stories, but the nuance of having Asian parents. 

Asami: I was going to ask you that like, you know, with your newborn or even after that, like, did you start to reflect a lot on how you were parented? And those kind of earlier memories and I don't know, things like that. 

Vi: And 100% I think even the dialog that I'd have with mum around, do you remember what I was like as a baby? She's like, nah, what do you mean? You know, I have seven siblings. So she's like no, I think it's written somewhere in the maternal child health book. But you know, I was working and pushing the pram at the same time or something like that. So even the ways my parents would narrate or talk about us, me and my siblings kind of growing up, What will I come? As easy children or difficult or unsettled. It did get me thinking about them a little bit more and maybe with the resources I had and they didn't. 

Asami: Yeah. If you compare your, your journey of early motherhood and parenthood versus your mum's like seven kids, seven kids in total. Yeah. Like what are some of those differences? Yeah. Can you tell us? 

Vi: Yeah, I think there's a lot I've won, obviously, that's a huge one. But for my parents, I think the way they parented us has got to do with the history that they experienced. 

MX in - Only You

So when they first came to Australia or their boat story was having two infants. So I think one was one and one was three, my sisters on a boat as refugees to Indonesia. And then they were sponsored to Australia. And so thinking about their experiences of lack of resources, their experiences coming here as, you know, refugees from the Vietnam War slash immigrants not speaking English, going through their own kind of trauma, loss of home, community trauma, collective trauma, and then also isolation from family and grieving, that too, whilst parenting. so for me- And working, and trying to stay alive. Trying to stay live, so it was very, I'd say survival-based or fear-based parenting where they were actually rightfully and understandably worried or fearful for their life at one point, or several points. The livelihood of their children growing up in our country. They've never been to. 

MX out

Vi: So versus mine, probably feels. A little bit easier if we were to kind of do a bit of a comparison and quite privileged. We also have these privileges that our parents didn't to have this language to express, to reflect, to talk about. And I don't know if my parents know the term intergenerational trauma. And so when I say, yes, privilege, but also language to define that and to talk about it and access to education to know. And have insight and awareness and reflection. 

Asami: Yeah, that's beautiful. You're so right. It's a privilege that we have this knowledge and these words that we can use to describe the things we've seen or experienced. And I want to know, when you were growing up, did you know about some of the experiences that your parents had gone through? Or the context for this question is, when I think back to my schooling, like when I think of history class, like. I didn't, we didn't learn anything about Asia except for maybe Japan and World War II. But apart from that, like I literally had no learning about Asia at all, right? But I wonder, like, did you know about the Vietnam War and did you about all these things either from your school or from your family? 

Vi: I think when I look back, we definitely knew we didn't belong here. We definitely knew. We looked different. We knew there was a Vietnam War. It was spoken about. We'd go back to Vietnam to visit. We knew about sort of the impact as well. So mum and dad didn't share as much at times. And then other times would drop like something really, really big on us. For example, you know, they might share. That, you know, did you know your uncle was shot? And you know that's why he didn't have to go to to fight in the war. And he, you came, he got to come back home and I was like, what do you mean shot? I'm only 10, mom. Like, you're like, hang on, what are you doing? And I understand that as their way of also making sense and sharing the stories with us that it might come in and the impact of trauma, right? Where it impacts on our way, the way that we recall memories and it impacts on retelling, and so it might come in little fragments. So now I remember it as, or I know it and understand it as their way of maybe making sense of their experiences. But certainly I did, I still don't know the full story. Yeah. And I am quite intentional and conscious about not asking unnecessary questions as well, because they don't owe me a story. And they share what what they feel comfortable with. And so the questions might be more around maybe understanding. Impacts as opposed to tell me about like what happened on the boat in 1980 something right which which might pull people back to more like trauma based kind of memories.

Asami: Did you have other families around you that were in similar situations or positions, like, did you have a good community? Yeah, I think the... 

Vi: The thing that I am really grateful for is my parents had quite a big community around them of family, extended family, but also they were part of like the Catholic community as well. 

MX in - On my doorstep

Um, one story comes to mind when, you know, one of our grandparents passed away in Vietnam and we've got seven, kids at home. Mum had to go talk one or two of us, um, to divide and conquer to Vietnam. And, and dad stayed home with us. So with our family, mum did most of the cooking, right? So then dad had to step up and it was a little bit frantic. For some reason, our aunties knew what they needed to do. So we would Get people knocking our door, bringing in pots of different variety of foods that we would consume for days. I remember eating, it's called like bun gan tum, which is like a noodle dish with prawns in it. And we had this like massive pot we had for like a whole week. And everyone was so sick of it. But looking- And so many children as well. So many children. It's so convenient. Everyone just eats this for like breakfast, lunch and dinner. And it was delicious. Until after day three, maybe. But thinking about that, how incredibly powerful that is to have community in unspoken ways when we need them and that they show up without asking with, you know, pots of food for this family. And obviously it was my aunties and lots of aunties and family friends, but they knew to come and they knew how to drop off food, fruits, veggies, whatever it was to make the family easier. And I think that's the way we show up. 

MX out

Asami: So your parents are first gen, and then you are second gen, Vietnamese, Australian. Now I guess your daughter is third generation. How do you kind of think about her culture and like, do you actively try to keep her involved in Vietnamese culture or like, how does that all work? 

Vi: It's a really interesting question because it's like, do I get a say in this when she thinks about her identity as a third-generation Vietnamese Australian? I hope that she gets to choose and pick intentionally or not what she likes, but the wonderful thing that we... We try to do is actually thinking about the festivities in the years, right? So for Vietnamese, it's the Chinese New Year or Lunar New Year. Celebrating that with family. It's a big time of the year, food, customs and all that. So bringing her into those kind of moments, but also giving her the chance to have a relationship with my parents or my partner's parents and what that means sort of for her. Um, and I'll probably have to correct myself. Um, my partner is Chinese Timorese. So my daughter is not a hundred percent Vietnamese. She is Chinese, Timoreese slash Vietnamese, Australian as well. So we do get sort of a mix of both, um, kind of cultures into that too. And, um. So it's not just sort of my side, but also, um my partner side around kind of, um you know, Chinese Timarese New Year, um and food and family gatherings, big weddings, all of that. Language is something we just teach maybe a little bit. I know a lot of families might have one who speak the language predominantly because there's a few languages in our household. We speak English as well at home but even just phrases or books or very, I love I think books, children's books that's created by sort of Asian, sort of Americans, Australians. And bringing that into sort of her learning and reading so that she gets to think about what her identity means and what it looks like and how it manifests in her life as well, so opportunities for her to instill that. 

Asami: Wow, it's going to be interesting, hey, third gen and beyond. And beyond, beyond. On the topic of food and celebrations you were talking about, I've seen some beautiful content that you make on social media and there's often a focus on food, which I love. But today I want to specifically talk about the cutting fruit metaphor that you talk about, right? Um, and I know you've got your earring, so you got the fruit earrings. Can you tell me, what do you mean about like, like, what is this metaphor cutting fruit? 

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. 

Asami: Especially in the context of Asian mental health, I love 

Vi: this question because I love the metaphor. So what it means probably for me and a few people that I mean many that I've spoken to is around the metaphor of a lot of us sort of Asian background growing up. Our parents didn't say I love you or our parents it didn't express you know care through more verbal kind of ways and they might have it through more unspoken ways. And I'll give you an example of my... My mum, when it's mango season, she'll buy like a tray or trays of mangoes. And on Sunday, everyone's got like bags and we're like taking all the mangoes and it's perfect, you know, every mango that my parents picked. And I talk about mum a lot because she goes grocery shopping a lot. But dad too, right? So mum and dad, they will pick the perfect mangoes and it's perfectly cut. And they'll just touch it and they'll be like, oh, yeah, that's the one. Or they'll smell it and I don't know which variety it is. So there's a lot of care and intention into even just like cutting fruit. And that's their way of maybe communicating and connecting with with several of us. So the metaphor of the cut fruit is around. Around that, but also how I guess I've used it in my work is thinking about how people might sort of mix those two worlds around something that our parents showed us as a way of showing love for and care for us and how we give that back to ourselves. And the term I use sometimes is like re-parenting, 

MX IN: [song name]

right? So we can choose to care for ourselves inside through multiple ways we can choose to. Learn a different way of talking to ourselves when we are sort of activated in different ways. And I guess a cut fruit metaphor is a really nice, and I'd say culturally affirming metaphor to lean into. So if we think about that back for us, when something we do doesn't go well, we mess up with something, we need a bit more self care in our lives, what might that look like in really small. Intentional wa ys, even just the way that you speak to yourself or even choosing, I don't know, not to go to someone when you're feeling deflated or choosing to go home and rather than lying in bed, you might go and cut yourself some mangoes or something like that. I love you. 

Asami: Yeah, I love that, and be like, I picked the perfect one for myself. 

Vi: Myself, and I'm learning to find the best one. 

MX OUT

Asami: Um, I really love this metaphor. I totally get where you're coming from. And on that, I'm going to be like super devil's advocate because I've definitely heard the flip side as well, right? Like I think for some Asian diaspora, um, especially like the second gen and people that grew up here in a different world from their parents, they say things like, like, sure, I get the cut fruit thing, like I get it. I appreciate it. But actually... I would have loved if my parents just told me that they loved me and they cared for me. Like, what do you say to those people? Yeah, no, I say, I agree. You're like, cut fruit is good too. Like I'm trying to understand the nuance. I love how you've cut the fruit for me, I get it. But could you just like be nice to me? 

Vi: Could you just say I love you? Can you just hug me? And I would say I totally get it and it's completely valid and I agree as well and I feel the same too, right? But also can it be both, right, can you feel maybe an acknowledgement, a recognition and honoring of these ways that maybe your carers, your parents have learned to give love as know and also acknowledge the pain that you also feel. And the desire that you also want and need. The need to be seen, the need to be acknowledged and loved and cared for. So can it be both, rather than one or the other? Because I think we can get quite fixated in, it's a metaphor in Indonesia's example, but we can fixated in right or wrong or black and white but often it is some middle ground that we might want to lean into to help us become unstuck around the ways that we to hold our family stories. That's so true. 

Asami: Two things can be true at the same time. Two things could be true the same. And it's like, you're not broken because no one told you that they loved you. 

Vi: You're not, you're not broken, but, and you are allowed to feel frustrated and angry and resentful actually that you didn't receive that as well. But also moving forward and maybe digging deeper around what would help you move forward. 

Asami: You can do that in therapy with people like me. And I'm gonna ask you about, because your practice is called the middle bridge project. And for me, that's like a really strong metaphor because I was like, oh, but bridges, like for me bring up this image of like, you help people cross over water or like, it's like, I think I wrote in my email like, it's a bridge carries heavy things, you know? And then I was, what does the metaphor mean to you? 

Vi: Yeah, and I'm so glad you asked that because the thing you said earlier about two opposing truths can be true at once. That was where I was inspired by the idea of the middle bridge in the term the middle path. A lot of Confucian values is thinking about how we become more flexible in our thinking. I'll give the example of siblings. We can love our sibling. We can hate them as well, right? We can find them hella annoying. Or the other thing is we can still be respectful to our parents, but we can also feel a deep resentment and sadness for them at the same time. And it might feel like two opposing forces, but that's the reality that we actually co-exist in life. So, and the bridge. There is thinking about how to bridge, I guess, generations, bridge ideas, bridge thoughts. And I love hearing people's interpretation of the middle bridge, because you're right, it is heavy. And no doubt what we do is heavy, but can also be quite connecting. Right. So my hope is sort of this middle space where we can have these conversations around bridging generations, bridging cultures and connections and conversations. 

Asami: Thank you for that explanation. And I want to segue to, I'm going to look directly, I'm gonna like break the fourth wall as they say. Everyone look at this, this is called cultural compass created by Vee at the middle bridge project. Thank you, for gifting me these cards. I'm so excited. Thank you. For having them, you had no choice. I know yeah, I have received them. Can we unbox? Unbox, please, unbox. If I could do it un-awkwardly. Oh my god, that was surprisingly easy. So my first review is really easy to open the plastic. Double tick there. Okay. So it's a pack of cards. So they're like- 

Vi: This is Asami's unboxing Cultural Compass, everyone. 

Asami: Again, the plastic is really easy to open. Wonderful packaging. The plastic is not the feature. Okay. Can you talk to us about these cards? They're beautiful. 

Vi: Yes. It's a 56 kind of values card deck. Um, and we think about values and, and I call it the cultural compass because we think of the compass as helping us with our direction. They're not something we achieve. So they're not goals, right? But clarifying them, clarifying what matters to us helps us move through life and ground us through life easier when life gets tough, but also when we want clarification in life. So, um, I guess this was, I get inspired in my past decade of practice in that there are a lot of tools and therapy products out there that are probably a bit more from Western kind of models. And my hope is to create more culturally responsive tools. And this is incorporating a lot of values within, I'd say South, East and East Asian kind of values, you know, filial piety, collectivism, interdependence, which is often on the sideline and neglected in a lot tools we use in therapy. So this is my hope to bring the conversation to the table. Not just in the therapy space, but for people who want to come back to what grounds me and what matters to me in my cultural context. Wow. Yeah. Beautiful. 

Asami: I know it's in the QR code, but could they be like a talking point? 

Vi: As well? Yeah, of course. So, so our first, I guess, exercise that I often share with people, and you don't have to have these cards to clarify your values, right? There's a lot of free, free resources online, but you should get it. Yeah, but because the images are quite lovely. And I'm biased as well because I created it, but the images do have more of, I'd say an Asian and kind of twists in them around, you know, having. Say black hair, people color, but also symbols like the lotus or bamboo that might be a bit more representative or familiar for a lot of people. But how you do it is you take your time, you might not do it here, but later on you might find a space and you might do what we call a values sort activity where you would go through each value and you put it in a pile of most important, somewhat important and not important. You go through that, each value and it gets you thinking about what's important to you right now, sort of in your life. And then you go to the most important pile and you pick five, top five, um, and then there's prompt prompting questions in the, the manual. 

Asami: Wow, that is so cool. Okay, I'm just gonna read a few. Yeah, please do. Oh, beautiful. Okay, so I picked the connection one and it says engaging authentically with others and the world, fostering meaningful relationships and shared experiences while maintaining openness, presence and understanding. The picture is of people making dumplings together. 

And you're so right. Like you never would see this in other kind of therapy tools or therapy resources about connection. You would see like, maybe like hugging, right? Or like a lot of physical contact, but you're so right, like this is a connection point. Even like in Japanese, it's like gyoza, but making the gyoza on our big dining table. Which we haven't done in this house that I've lived in since COVID. So lacking connection everywhere. 

Vi: And that's that's exactly right. It's prompted you to think about connection. That's true. It's the last time we do. 

Asami: The last time we did it actually it was when Yo came over to our house and then I made him make the dumplings and then cook them. You need a dumpling party now. 

Vi: Out because of it. Right. Yeah. So it gets you thinking. And I really like how you thought about sort of your own experiences and how like the meaning that you make of this image. Right. Because someone else might look at it and be like, no, I don't really eat dumplings. Yeah. Or they might have a different meaning that they make with dumplings or the images or the word connection as well. But it prompts. So I guess it's a space for conversation and dialog and further thinking. 

Asami: Wow, that's beautiful. Thank you for making this product and this thing that now exists in the world and a culturally responsive tool that people can use as well. So this should be used in psychology practices, not just like for individuals, you know, but people should be buying this, everyone. Anyway. 

Vi: Anyway, it's for therapists as well, we have lots of therapists, so it's for therapists and I guess everyday, everyday people too, but thank you for giving me the platform to talk about it and you can share it. 

Asami: It's beautiful. And thank you for all the work that you do and for sharing your story so openly. I think hearing firsthand that experience of you being a parent, the history of your parents' journey here and comparing your experiences and also just knowing that you are this so-called Asian parent, whatever that means, and how you conceptualize and how kind of navigate the world to support your daughter is really beautiful. So thank you. And for all of the work that you as well as a psychologist. It was lovely to chat. Say. I just want to tell everyone that V is on Instagram at middlebridgeproject. Yes, middlebridge project. We'll put it all in the show notes. But everyone listening, thank you so much for your time. But you can find us on Instagram and LinkedIn at Just Shapes and Sounds. You'll see that V is connected to us. Don't worry on our socials as well. Please subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app, because it really helps. Other people find us. It's just how the world works these days, right? But please download this episode for offline listening. And most importantly, if you can share this episode with your friends, maybe some parents, maybe some new parents, oh my God, they really need to hear this, right. Because word of mouth really helps us to destigmatize mental health within Asian communities. 

Vi: Thanks for joining us here today. And the shapes and sounds team, it's been really fun and I feel very relaxed. Do you? Yeah, me too. Your voice is very peaceful. Oh, thanks Asabi, it's so fun. 

Keywords: Asian Australian parenting, clinical psychologist Melbourne, Vietnamese Australian, intergenerational trauma, Asian family dynamics, culturally competent psychology, Asian Australian mental health, breaking cycles, cultural identity, Asian parenting styles