Therapist’s Letter to Clients During Uncertain Times in the ICE Age

Dear Clients,

I know you are scared. You have shown up to our sessions scared and hopeless for our country and what it could mean for our communities, and how it has been affecting immigration anxiety in all of you. I take deep breaths before logging into each session, wishing that we weren’t in this modern civil war and that we weren’t hurting too much if we could help it.

Our communities have gone through too much immigration trauma for us to be here again—the railroad, the Chinese Exclusion Act, denied citizenship and ownership of land and property, and physical violence during COVID-19, just to name a few. Immigration terror has been going on for many generations, but now people are paying attention after some of their lives have been taken.

I remember the terror I felt when I lost my passport along with my visa in 2017, living in a red state. I remember the terror many of my Muslim friends felt when their religion and their identities were demonized. I remember when our Asian elders were attacked in San Francisco, when a young Asian woman was pushed to a train track in New York City, and when 8 Asian women were shot to death in an Atlanta spa. There are too many to name.

I remember the radio silence that many of my clients and I experienced from our friends and communities.

I feel relieved that people are now paying attention. And I also feel angry that it took two White people dying and a 5-year-old being kidnapped by ICE agents for people to start paying attention to what has plagued our country for many years [Rest in peace, Renee and Alex].

If you feel angry, that is okay with me. If you feel relieved, that is also okay with me. I’m here to hold space when you come to the session, just to vent, fall apart, and pick yourself back up.

Throughout that process, we are not going to CBT our way through a crisis.

I’m going to hold your heart, your soul, and all the emotions that you are feeling, and honor all of those and create space for them to just exist and breathe.

You aren’t in therapy just to achieve goals. You are also in therapy to fall apart, cry, pick yourself back up, and repeat as many times as you want; that is a part of your journey. I’m here to amplify your voice so that you don’t feel silenced or overlooked again. I’m here to advocate for your safety and your innate dignity as a human being.

I see your courage and vulnerability, so thank you for trusting me with your healing.

Love,

Dr. Wonbin