Queer-Affirming Therapy for Immigrants and Adult Children of Immigrants in NYC | EMDR, IFS & Creative Arts Therapy

The invisible weight you carry as an immigrant or adult child of immigrants

As an immigrant or an adult child of immigrants, you may be holding so much on your shoulders without even realizing. Being used to these feelings does not make the weight any less heavy.

You worry about losing a language, a home, a history. You worry about forgetting, being forgotten, misremembering, never knowing it at all. You feel like you’re constantly translating yourself, but somehow never enough to feel seen. No matter how much you look for that sense of belonging, there are parts of you that feel like they just don’t fit. Sometimes you feel like you’re losing who you are.

Your family, your culture, your country: that history lives in your body even if you didn’t directly experience it. Sometimes there are burdens that we inherit from the ones that came before us, and parts of you might be carrying fears, survival instincts, and undigested and unprocessed grief that just keeps going on and on, generation after generation.

Silver paperclip in the shape of a reindeer with antlers.
A dirt road running through a dry, grassy plain with mountains the background under a partly cloudy blue sky.
Elderly person pouring tea from a decorated teapot into a small floral teacup on a textured cloth.
A mural on the side of a multi-story building depicting a smiling woman holding up a child against a background of wind turbines and mountains.
Silver paperclip in the shape of a smiling monkey in an onsen

“Was it worth it?” The guilt, pressure, and self-doubt you carry

You worry about parents aging without you there, siblings growing up while you only see them on a screen, friends getting married or having children while you’re stuck coordinating flights, visas, and time zones. You grieve a life where you could have stayed, a life path is so easy to imagine, and at the same time so hard to visualize. You refresh government portals at 2 a.m., reread emails from your lawyer or international student office, and feel your chest tighten every time you see ‘case pending’ or read headlines about immigration policy changing again. Your sense of safety and belonging feels shattered at times, like it could be taken away from you at any point.

Maybe your family reminds you of how much they sacrificed so you could be here, while also expecting you to send money home, be emotionally available across time zones, and still excel at work or school in a city that never slows down. That is another act of translating, another act of shutting away parts of yourself. You compare yourself to other immigrants or international students who seem to be ‘thriving,’ and then wonder what is wrong with you for feeling lonely, anxious, or burnt out when you’re supposed to be ‘grateful.”

You find yourself replaying family narratives of sacrifice and loss, and struggling to separate away to find your identity away from the expectations and stories you grew up with. You might catch yourself repeating internal lines like “we didn’t come all this way for you to rest” or “you have to make this worth it,” even when your body is begging you to slow down.

  • I have worked with many clients who are grad students, tech workers, finance, healthcare, and creative professionals who are terrified that one mistake could cost them their job or visa; therapy can help you hold that reality while also creating room for rest, imperfection, and a more sustainable pace for your nervous system.

  • We pay attention to the stories of sacrifice and survival that you may have grown up with or inherited, learn how they live in your body now, and develop a way forward where you can honor your family’s history while still making room for your own needs, values, and choices.

  • The first step is simply a brief consultation where we can see what you’re going through right now and whether working together feels like a good fit. From there, we can figure out achievable goals that keep your identity, your background, and your lived experience in mind.

In our work together, you can expect to:

  • Get to know the different parts of you: the high‑achieving part that keeps pushing, the part that is exhausted and homesick, the part that feels guilty for wanting something different, and the part that is curious about another way of living; and figure out ways to soften, unburden, or release the parts of you that you may be struggling with

  • Explore what belonging might mean for you when it isn’t tied to your address or language, so that over time you can feel more like yourself. This is the heart of immigrant and expat therapy in NYC: creating room for all the places you come from, and all the places you’re going.

  • Separate your values from family or cultural narratives, and develop more clarity on your future

  • Experiment with setting boundaries and reducing conflict anxiety: WhatsApp calls and time differences, money requests, sudden family needs, constant expectations of availability at work or in grad school, and more, so you can be in relationship with others without disappearing from your own life.

  • Use EMDR, IFS (parts work), and sometimes art‑making to process memories, images, and body sensations that feel stuck—whether they’re tied to migration, identity‑based harm, family conflicts, or earlier experiences—so they feel a little less overwhelming in the present.

  • Make room for all of your identities: immigrant or expat, adult child of immigrants, international student, queer or questioning, BIPOC, Asian, third culture kid; without having to translate or justify them, and explore what belonging might look like when it doesn’t fit neatly into one country or language

Whether you’re an immigrant, an adult child of immigrants, an expat, or an international student in NYC, your story is allowed to be complex, and it is still unfolding. If you’d like to talk with someone who understands some of these dynamics firsthand, I’d be honored to hear from you.

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