12. Chatting with Michelle Yang, Writer and Mental Health Advocate

Welcome to Chatting with Asians.

On this episode, I chat with writer Michelle Yang. Before she pursued writing, she was climbing the corporate ladder at Fortune 500 companies. She also received her MBA and studied abroad in China but what she is truly passionate about is being a mental health advocate. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 20 years old and had trouble finding role models, especially people of color and those who’ve immigrated to America. With the right treatment and hard work, she has proven to be her own role model. Nowadays, she uses her writing to share her stories so that they will reassure others who are facing similar challenges. So here is my conversation with Michelle.

Michelle Yang: Thank you for having me Angie.

Angie: Great, thank you so much. Yeah, I loved our initial kind of warm up conversation that we had…I don’t know…maybe like a couple months back and I’m just so excited to have you on as a guest. It sounds like you’ve achieved so much in life right now where you studied abroad in China, you’ve graduated Summa Cum Laude, pursued your MBA, worked at corporations like Starbucks and Nestle making lots of money and you’re married with kids and so, you know, kind of on paper it sounds like you’ve got the perfect life with that was very seamless and with no issues at all. So for your own point of view, what are people’s reactions or responses when you tell them that you’ve been living with bipolar disorder since you were diagnosed at 20?

Yeah, I mean like…I, you know, it’s like first of all not that much money… As much as you would make like, if you have an MBA, you know, corporate, in a big city sort of way… you know, it’s like yes we definitely do well but it’s not like… Bill Gates, right?

No, that’s true. That’s like the San Francisco lifestyle right? Like okay you make like buttloads of money but also working here is crazy expensive.

Right, right. So yes, but I know on paper, I know it looks great and that’s one of the reasons I came out because it’s like I know that how it looks people actually have said to me that it’s like, you know, and I…I hope it doesn’t sound like I have a really big head or anything like that.

No, no.

That like my life looks really enviable from the outside, right? And so I think that’s why it was really important for me to come out and let you…let people know that is like no I have my struggles too and also that I’m in a unique position to be able to advocate for mental health awareness and to destigmatize it. To like show that look, I live this great life, I am supremely happy yet I still struggle with this mental health, you know, severe mental illness and up until recently I told very few people. It was not until like late January early February that I started writing publicly about it and…and so you know…and before I was out I was working up the nerve to share with people just one-on-one and the typical reactions usually are like, “Really? I can’t tell,” or like “You know, you must have a really mild case,” which is like at which I understand is a reaction of surprise and you have to give people a minute to absorb that information, but it always…that kind of reactions made me feel small and they made me feel like you’re not…not like I was really being heard or just it kind of minimizes the condition that I actually have and the gravity of what I just shared, right? And also it just continues to show this…that actually validates my fear that they do hold a stigma against the mental illness. They’re like, “Oh, well, you’re a normal person that I know and so that means you must have a mild case,” and so…and sometimes even worse I can see judgment in their eyes. I can see the disgust that like they’re trying to hide like, “Oh, I thought you were better than that,” and I know it’s just like you need to give people a little bit of time to absorb and by large people have been amazingly supportive. But it’s that first moment is like it is pretty telling, you know, and that gives me more drive to continue to do what I do to advocate for mental health awareness. Yeah, I mean ‘cos I wanted people to know that I’m the same dependable person whose just as worthy of love…that they knew before my diagnosis and that’s how we can get rid of stigma, you know, and I know that like I can’t advocate for myself if I don’t first admit to people what I am, you know.

Yeah, totally. I think one of the most admirable things that I felt like in our initial conversations was just your like resilience to just handle everything that you’ve handled so far in your life, especially when you’re talking about your journey with bipolar disorder. And so if we kind of go back in time a little bit, when did you first start noticing symptoms?

You know, I think we all have…we must all even if I have the most perfect life, right, like what is a perfect life…in your youth there’s memories and it’s hard for me to tell always like what was a normal symptom of having, you know, some experience some hardships in life versus what was actually a mental health symptom. And I think that if I really think about it, like it must be sixth grade, is when I was like really serious had prolonged deep depression about like led to long periods of insomnia and just I remember me really struggling but even before then like ‘cos I emigrated when I was 9 from Korea and I remember even as a like a really young kid in Korea not being able to sleep, like I was awake when everybody else in the house was asleep and then immigration, you know, I’m assuming a lot of our listeners are…have immigrant families or immigrated themselves, like that’s traumatic in itself and I didn’t speak any English. None of my family members had even traveled West before our immigration so I put a lot of pressure on myself to learn English as quickly as possible and ‘cos I didn’t want to feel dumb, right, you don’t want to feel dumb, you don’t want to feel alone, and like you just are always out of the loop. If you don’t speak the language and so I remember crying myself to sleep during immigration but it’s like that’s hard for anyone. So it’s like, is that my…is an early sign of mental illness…the mental health condition that I was, you know, had a hard time adjusting but I mean It took two years for me to become fluent in English…and for like to begin to assimilate and so it’s like I think that’s a fair amount of time. And so..but also it’s like the end of that two-year period is was one sixth grade…was when I was really depressed, you know, so yeah, I’d say sixth grade short answer…not so short.

Yeah, no, I mean understandably it’s like the experiences you went through with immigration. Like I think so much to process mentally and emotionally with such a life event like that, that I can’t even imagine ‘cos I was born here but you know for my parents and my grandparents, that’s the story that they’ve told me too.

Right.

So, I guess, you know, with your experiences in seeking out help what was that like and do you feel like there is a difference between seeking out help before the diagnosis and after the diagnosis?

Oh, yes, very very different.

Oh, okay.

Before the diagnosis, I was just a teenager, you know, I was having trouble being taken seriously, especially because I’m such a good student. I was really hard working and everything on the surface look like it was going well, you know, I worked hard not only at school but in extracurricular activities. I did lots of extracurricular activities, too much, you know and I’m working really hard at my parents restaurant too. And so it was hard for me, for I mean, for people to recognize my struggles as anything more severe and my parents were too afraid to deal with it. They were afraid of the stigma that they themselves were entrenched in, right, about mental illness and they didn’t…they didn’t believe that it was a real thing. So, of course, if you don’t recognize mental illness as a thing, like how would you get help for it? So I wasn’t diagnosed until I suffered a mental break when I was studying abroad in China. It was just after 9/11, it was a hard time like a lot of adjustments and it took away…it took being away from home and being away from people who know me for me to be taken seriously, you know, and so I think society really wants to believe right now that bipolar disorder is envogue that doctors give that label kind of willy-nilly to a lot of young people or even children that it’s like giving too easily and it’s like that it results in too many people…too many people on medication and…but that was certainly not the case for me and not the experience. I hear a lot here from from the support group that I’m active in, you know, and it’s like I certainly, of course, I understand like you don’t want to Medicaid a young child before their brain is fully developed…

Totally.

But yeah, I mean any trained, any good trained psychiatrist with rule out other forms of mental illness like unipolar depression or anxiety before a bipolar diagnosis so in my experience and it’s those of many others like me this means that the doctor will first prescribe you an antidepressant even when you have experienced psychosis, right, but once you…if you’re bipolar and you take most ssris or a lot of ssris, we tried too depressants, it triggers mania and this…and so this informed my doctor that I have bipolar disorder and not just depression. So, I just would like to…that’s like one of my messages that it’s real thing one, and it’s not something that just like everybody can get a look…get a label for. And so, and seeking treatment and maintaining that treatment plan after diagnosis can still be very challenging because every time I moved or got a new job with new health, new health insurance often meant that I needed to find all new providers and I’m sure when you’re 20-something, just out of school, there’s a lot of changes. You move like every year and you get new jobs and the last thing to have to one research and refined your providers by new providers and then re-tell your traumatic experiences over and over to strangers and, you know, it’s really honestly hard to find therapist and psychiatrist that you click with, who understand you. I’ve had a psychiatrist before that had terrible bedside manners, all he wanted to do is like pretty aggressively talk about my medication only and wouldn’t let me describe how I was feeling at all. And actually for me as an ambitious working person, I really limited myself to which providers I could go to because I would always try to find ones that were closest to my work so that I would do little work as possible…I didn’t want it to disrupt my life and so…and I also had a therapist once who during my first appointment kept repeating, “You people care about only respect…you people…you people,” and of course she’s not a person of color and she kept…over and over again and I should have walked out but like I was frozen in my seat and I…I didn’t…but of course I never went back to her. And so after that actually it started a period of where I try to only see Asian-American providers and luckily I’m in a city where that’s even remotely possible, right, I know a lot of people like that…that luxury that’s just not accessible, you know, so right now I have a great Chinese American psychiatrist and she…I think it just saves time like I don’t have to explain as much about like how I grew up.

Exactly.

And also I perceive less judgment where it’s like founded or not about my culture and family, like they’re just more understanding right off the bat and it’s like being able to vent to someone who knows what it’s like instead of shocking someone with my experience like ‘cos that’s not that…I don’t want to be a pain to someone, so yeah that’s my experience.

Yeah, no, I completely like 110% resonates. That resonates with me just ‘cos like right now I have a therapist and I have done therapy like here and there but nothing ever really serious. They were usually kind of remote therapist too so it was just easier, you know, while I was travelling or whatever I was doing. And so this year, I really wanted to make a commitment to myself like no, I really want to seek out a therapist that I can physically sit down with and like actually have that, you know, human interaction.

Yes.

And conversation…and it was really important for me this time around to find someone who is Asian or Asian American too ‘cos like our experiences are truly very different. You know just from that background and it’s…I can’t even imagine how tough it would be to have to explain the nuances of our different cultures and customs and like having to explain like no, no, it’s like okay, like within…within this family, you know, that’s like yeah.

Well not necessarily okay, it’s just like why it’s done.

Yeah, yeah, so it’s really nice to be able to like not have to explain just like what’s conventional in our culture.

Yeah, it’s not like having that like cultural lens.

Oh, yeah, totally. You faced like an amazing amount, at least to me, just a lot of push back, you know, from counselors and doctors and your own family and I guess it’s kind of ties back in so, you know, you’re searching for people of color and immigrant kind of mental health role models early on. Do you think that there’s more people of color and immigrant mental health role models nowadays? Or do you think there’s more room for improvement?

Oh I would, I would love for more.

Definitely give you more!

Yeah, there are few now. I mean back when I was 20s, first diagnose we’re struggling. I didn’t know of anyone and this was like early 2000s so the internet was definitely not what it is today, and I didn’t know where to look so I didn’t know where to look and now many Asian American mental…mental health advocates are working hard to create awareness and destigmatize mental illness. But I don’t think there’s still someone with that high-profile as much reach like or I would love for someone you know who’s like Lady Gaga level but was Asian-American, you know, that would be amazing, right? But you know, like there are other people who are working really hard on it doing great work. DJ Chuang has been working with his Erasing Shame podcast for a long time and there’s also an advocate from California also named Emily Wu Truong who is very active as well and done a lot of great work, but all of us deliver our messages differently and I think messages themselves even very as well, for example, DJ and his collaborators, they do fantastic work and they are from the Christian faith community and so they, you know, some of their work focuses on that and where is like my advocacy is more secular and where it is secular and so there’s just such a wide range of people who, of course, like I don’t have to say Asian Americans we’re all different, right, and we’re going to relate to different aspects of the story and so definitely looking for more.

Yeah, yeah, I think for me this is a topic that I’ve been thinking about especially I’m quite active on Instagram probably spend more time on it than I really should. I think one of the things I’ve definitely noticed just the way that social media is and that’s the way the internet is, is that a lot of the wellness Instagram accounts that I come across are mostly led by not people of color.

Yeah, I know right?

Yeah. Yeah, it would just be nice to see even on a social influencer level right just more diversity in terms of wellness and mental health space. I think it’s just, it’s so impactful just seeing the images being attached to that kind of mission for sure.

I mean, me personally, when I couldn’t find a book when I was diagnosed with, you know, I went to the library and I wanted to find a good example of someone, just one person who was leading a normal life with my diagnosis and like the only book at the time that I could find was a Young Caucasian woman that I was really excited to find it, but I still wished there was a person of color story. And then now later you don’t fast-forward almost 20 years there’s, there are a lot more books but mostly are still, yeah, non people of color perspectives. So yeah, there’s definitely a need which is why I’m actually writing my own story.

I know and we could definitely talk about that in a little bit…yeah, very exciting. But I definitely feel the same way where there’s room for improvement, for sure, in terms of representation.

Definitely.

You know, there’s a lot of statistics and articles on how generally most Asian cultures treat the topic of mental health and it’s a it’s a very complex, you know, multi-layer kind of situation. For your own personal perspective, did you feel that your culture and heritage impacted your mental health journey whether it was positively or negatively?

I think this is a really complex question. It’s a tough question and this is why I prefer speaking too actually, and my target audience is Asian-Americans when I explain my own struggles with my mental health and the…and the stigma because there is a basis of understanding, right, like we mentioned earlier, there’s a better understanding that I’m speaking my own experience and not that of every other Asian person. You know, the Asian diaspora is so vast and so diverse, my life story as a first-generation immigrant could not be more different than, you know, my best friend who’s a fifth-generation Chinese-American.

Right.

And I think, you know, my family history is a lot, or a family history is a lot better way to put it than culture or heritage because that separates my story, my own story from and it makes it so I’m clearly not speaking for billions of people who identify as Asian, you know, and like for me like speaking about my family history it contains trauma, right, my grandfather, my grandparents fled northern China due to famine and they wanted to make a better life in Korea only to encounter the Korean War and my parents were born just a couple years after the war ended and the country was completely decimated. It, you know, definitely a period of need and of healing and of rebuilding and that kind of trauma can cause cast a shadow that like that really goes down several generations, you know, the fight or flight reflex, the fear of losing everything in a moment…if that’s, that anxiety is passed down and I think that’s why my parents have hoarding tendencies and they’re afraid of losing everything and so if you think about this family history of trauma as a baseline and as a baseline for many people whether it’s Native Americans or blacks or whites, even, you know, it doesn’t matter the culture or the heritage. It’s the trauma, the family history of trauma that makes the difference if dear is still ruling one’s life whether they’ve been able to escape, that need to teach their children that fear…to pass on that fear. I just finished reading Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates which is a great book and it makes a point of a really clearly pointing out that fear can be needed for survival, you know, when you’re in an environment that you don’t feel you’re in control and so like that kind of I think helps us understand that it’s not necessarily like cause what duties does…person of…people of color communities have in common, it’s not necessarily, I don’t want to attribute it to culture or heritage, I think it’s trauma. So that’s a rather long answer to saying yes my parents view on mental health and their inability to grasp its seriousness really did affect me but their own mental health affected me more. It still affects me today because yeah, it’s a misguided survival instinct. It’s born out of a misguided instinct to protect us, it’s no less harmful, and I’m not making excuses, but I kind of refuse to blame it on culture or heritage. We can’t have trauma masquerading as culture that’s incredibly harmful and it causes the cycle of abuse to continue. It builds on stereotypes on racism and even self-hate and it prevents us from being proud of our culture and heritage and I don’t want that, you know, and there’s a thing called progress and it’s our responsibility to break the cycle of abuse and to take…to make progress you know.

That’s such an incredible like viewpoint. I just, yeah, I’m really blown away by your response. It was not long at all. It was perfect.

Thank you.

Obviously the Asian, you know, community is just so very so so so very and there, and there can’t be a blanket kind of statement of like how we all treat mental health ‘cos it is very much personal and related to each of our own family histories. Yeah, that is a really amazing statement. Thank you so much for sharing that.

Thank you, yeah.

I think it’s kind of really beautiful to me that it’s become a full circle moment for you that you’ve decided to become a mental health advocate and writer kind of like becoming your own role model that you’ve been searching for. So how did you feel when you made this jump, you know, out of the corporate life and into writing and advocacy?

Angie, I felt I felt so free, I felt so free and I felt such a sense of relief and, you know, don’t get me wrong, like I loved my past 3 years and I really fed off the feeling of being productive and of having high achievement ‘cos that’s the way I was conditioned and raised and of course to have the privilege of making a good living meant that I didn’t have to stress about money the way my family always did growing up, you know, and slowly learning to relax about money and striking that balance between trying to be as frugal as possible all the time just as a default to living a little, and…and it’s revolutionary, revolutionary. I think like my husband actually like teach me to do that but it’s also guilt-inducing because I know my parents will live that frugal life forever whether or not it’s need-based ‘cos that’s just the way they are, you know.

Yeah.

So, but anyway, besides this, the freedom that money gave me like….I…the reason I left was I realized that I was putting so much pressure on myself like putting so much of myself into my work that I had nothing left at the end of the day. I was not healing, I was not reflecting enough, you know, I was procrastinating everything I had to do that was more personal not professional and just I needed to feed my soul. Like I had the….before corporate life I’ve been a non-profit worker. I worked in international adoption and in women and children’s advocacy issues. And so I begun running so hard in this corporate race that I never really intended to join that I didn’t realize how much I missed the mission driven work. And so I just kind of had this epiphany moment of like what am I doing like this? You know, this is not worth for me. This is not what I had set out my life to do and so now I’m working really hard on my writing and I treated as a normal job where I’m like in my office all day but I also, I also find myself really rejuvenated by each day because I love what I’m putting out and I have so much more energy for my son, for my husband, my dog who thinks it’s the greatest thing in the world that I’m home all the time. Now. I just feel so much healthier and happier. I’ve never been happier.

That’s amazing. Yes, yeah, I…even for myself, I feel like well I’m going to turn 30 this year. And I feel like when I’m looking back on just my twenties, I’m happy with the way that I spent it. I don’t think I could have spent it any differently and felt, you know, happier or ,you know, lesser. So I…I am happy with the way I spent my 20s but I was also kind of like a very ambitious go-getter like, you know, got to…got to work at the career ladder and got to make x amount of money and have all these benefits and join big companies and big brands and have big name clients, but last year…was it last year? Or a couple years ago now was the first time I felt very burnt out from that kind of lifestyle that just go go go.

Right.

Kind of mentality, and so and I took a year off just to kind of like reset, rethink and just reflect and it’s definitely made me feel like I appreciate all the hard work that I’ve put into the career. But maybe it’s coming now at an expense of like personal needs and personal values. Yeah, and so I think it’s really important to kind of find some kind of balance like there’s never going to be a perfect picture, perfect, you know, balance lifestyle everyday. But yeah, I’m also feeling the same way were maybe the corporate life isn’t serving my best interests all the time. And I’m realizing that my priorities are different now where I want to spend more time with my parents being able to travel with them while they’re physically able to. Create more obviously. I’m working on this podcast, but I love the idea of maybe collaborating with other people on like other things. I have no idea, painting or music, I like, I have no idea but I just wanna explore, yeah.

Yeah, I mean you know I hope that I can be successful enough with my writing that I can…that this is more sustainable for a longer period of time because, yeah, I mean I am not making a regular paycheck anymore, right? And so I’m doing freelance writing and hoping to sell my book, but you know, it’s different and it’s like for me the first time I still call it a luxury to like to kind of live like a starving artist.

Yeah I feel the same way. Where like I feel like my parents have given so much of their time and effort to build a very comfortable life like we didn’t start out that way but now I realize the privilege I have. Just financially with the way that my parents and I have been set up for now. So yeah, I also recognize that I’m very lucky to have the ability to just like explore other options. Yeah, I think kind of going back into your writing that ‘cos you mentioned that you’re working on a book.

Right.

So yeah, you’re…is this book focused on like mental health advocacy or like what’s the mission of your writing right now?

So I started my memoir with a mission statement. That’s the first thing I wrote and I wanted to reach people experiencing mental health challenges, especially Asian-Americans and to show them that a good and happy life is well within reach. That you can still thrive with a mental health condition but that the first step is making a commitment to treatment and wellness. I don’t want anybody to be suffering alone ‘cos I, I did that, you know, and suicide rates…I don’t think I have to say like is increasing at an unprecedented rate amongst teenagers. We’re really failing to convince our kids that life will get better and I want them to get the message that it does get better, that in that they can get help. I think especially those people that we don’t even know are suffering, I think those are often the ones that are most at risk and I know it can be so daunting in the beginning when you first get your diagnosis that it’s I just want them to know that life can still work out, you know, that it doesn’t have to define you, doesn’t define your life. It’s very manageable.

So I think it’s just amazing that you’re dedicating yourself to advocating for mental health and trying to bring awareness especially for future generations that really need to hear that or read about it. And so, I guess if you could give advice to those who have a negative impression of mental health, what would you say?

I think one of the main things right now that I would love for our society to be aware of is that right now there seemed to be no distinction between mental illness in remission versus mental illness without treatment. Like we are, when people think about mental illness we’re all grouped into the same group no matter if you’re like non-medicated, untreated versus you’re like really managing it. That really boggles my mind because it seems like the term in remission seem to only be known by professionals and it’s like if you think about someone who is actively dying of terminal cancer versus someone who survived cancer in their twenties that are living a full life now but you would never group those people together and what they’re capable of, you know, and where there are in their journeys. But yep, we do that with mental illness. It makes no sense.

That’s interesting, yeah.

And I just want people to know like as much as cancer survivors are living amazing lives, in remission people living with mental health conditions can also reach that level of stability. I would love for people to think about mental health the same way they would think about physical health without stigma and without discrimination and of course like no judgment as well, you know, mental illness is not a character flaw. I can’t say that enough. It’s not a choice. It’s not someone being dramatic and being irresponsible and they can’t just snap out of it. Everyone’s… It’s not a weakness. I think if there’s a lot of just kind of blaming on the person who has, who lives with a mental illness and everyone’s bodies and their brains are so different. We react to medications differently. We react to treatment differently and I would love for our world to have more compassion and understanding around that. And without shame and stigma, people struggling would be able to access help and treatment more easily ‘cos they would not be…they would be less afraid to admit that that’s what they’re struggling with, you know, and they would feel more supported and help them reach a place of in remission which is where I’ve been for several years.

I think it’s definitely, yeah, misunderstanding. That’s a huge thing nowadays and you know, yeah, especially for mental health. Yeah, we definitely need more compassion. We really need more understanding. If you could give advice to those to think that they might need help but aren’t sure what to do next, what would you like to say?

I’d say there’s no shame in needing help at all and talking to a professional. You know, it doesn’t hurt to find a therapist if often the first consultation is free. So there’s just no harm in trying it and I feel like if your life and your well-being, if there’s something even…if there’s even a remote possibility that you could end up a happier person and be more at peace, I think it’s worth a try, right, and if you haven’t gotten help and are in the dark place there are National helpline that you can use. I’m an active volunteer with the National Alliance on Mental Illness. She’s a nonprofit and they have a helpline that can be…that’s available and the staff there help you…guide you to your next resources. Of course, if you’re in a true crisis you should call 911. But there’s also the National Suicide Prevention helpline which is which you call 800–273-TALK and there’s even a text line that you could use for if you’re in a crisis and that’s there’s one with NAMI where you can text the letters “nami” to 741741 and then they’ll…it’s a 24-hour seven-days-a-week support through text message. So there’s definitely help if you are In a bad place. Otherwise, I think the first step is realizing you’re not alone and starting to talk about your problems ‘cos I, now that I’ve come out so many people have come out of the woodwork from my life and it turned out that my best friend in high school, she was struggling with severe anxiety and panic attacks and unable to sleep at the same time I was and we were on the phone for hours everyday, we’re teenage girls right and yet we didn’t know this about each other.

Wow.

And you know there’s another friend from my MBA program who when my article on Huffpost came out wrote me and said she…she lives with bipolar disorder as well. And there’s like so many examples of this that it gives me chills that have like, oh my God, how much could we have been there for each other and supported each other had we been not ashamed to talk about our struggles. How much we would have been better for it if we were able to help each other so you are not alone if you’re struggling, you know? Talk about it. Even if you’re not ready for a therapist. Like talk about it with a friend, somebody you trust and yeah therapy…great. I can’t say enough.

Same for me. I, yeah, therapy has been amazing since I started taking it a little more seriously this year and I can’t highly recommend it enough. So yes, it’s, yeah, you are definitely not alone.

Right.

To anyone out there who feels like that they are.

Yes.

Yeah, oh my gosh. Well, I think this is kind of the end of our episode unfortunately but I wanted to thank you so much Michelle for taking the time sharing your story, your thoughts, everything.

Thank you Angie. I love your podcast.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for all your great work.

Thank you.

Website: http://www.livingwellhappily.com/published-works/

Instagram: @michelleyangwriter

This episode’s music was by Paulina Vo. You can check her out at soundcloud.com/paulinavo.

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