Mental Health Is Our Birthright: Destigmatizing Support in Our Communities
Written by: Angelika Holleran, M.Ed, LPC, CEO of Golden Hour Counseling and Wellness,
Therapinxy Chicago-Midwest Chapter Co-Lead
Mental Health Is Our Birthright:
Destigmatizing Support in Our Communities
The alarm goes off before sunrise.
A 33 year old, Filipina-American woman reaches for her phone, her hand remembers the exact spot she placed it from scrolling the night before. She’s already scanning emails before her feet touch the floor. She has a work presentation at 9 a.m. Her family group chat is buzzing with reminders about an upcoming birthday party. A missed call from her mother makes her feel guilty for not returning it sooner. Somewhere between the commute and the mental checklist running at full speed, she tells herself the same thing she has repeated for years:
“Kaya ko ’to.”
I can do this.
To everyone around her, she is thriving. She is the dependable eldest daughter. The accomplished professional. The community leader. The friend who always shows up. She is the kind of person people describe as “so strong.”
But strength, as she learned it, came with conditions.
Strength meant swallowing panic attacks in office bathrooms before walking back into meetings with a smile. It meant calling burnout “being tired.” It meant convincing herself that needing help would somehow dishonor the sacrifices her parents made. It meant appearing functional on the outside so that no one could see how deeply lonely she felt underneath the surface.
And in quieter moments, sitting in traffic after another 12-hour day, reheating dinner at 10 p.m., staring blankly at the glow of her laptop, she wonders why success doesn’t feel like success.
What she doesn’t realize yet is that her exhaustion is not a personal failure.
It is inherited.
As we navigate the intersection of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month (AAPIHM) and Mental Health Awareness Month, it is vital to peel back the layers of our history to understand our present. For many in the Filipino community, the journey toward healing isn’t simply a personal choice, it is an act of reclaiming a birthright that has long been buried beneath colonial inheritance, survival mode, and systemic pressure.
The Weight of “Kaya Ko ’To”
In Filipino culture, resilience is often worn as a badge of honor. We hear phrases like “Kaya ko ’to” or “Others have it worse,” which become functional shields that keep us moving, earning, and caregiving. But beneath that resilience often lives a deeper shame ecosystem:
• Self-stigma: Believing that needing help is weakness or failure.
• Family stigma: Fearing therapy reflects poorly on the household or exposes private family matters.
• Community stigma: The anxiety that “word will get out,” and that chismis (gossip) will disrupt social standing or reputation.
We minimize our pain to remain functional. We overachieve to outrun vulnerability. To not do so, would be disrespectful of our parents' sacrifices. But when silence becomes our primary form of coping, we are often carrying colonial messages that taught us our value lives in sacrifice, obedience, and silence.
A Legacy of Silence: Colonialism and the Hidden Script
To understand why asking for help can feel so uncomfortable, we have to look underneath the surface. Colonial mentality conditioned many Filipinos to distrust their own emotions while proving worth through productivity and sacrifice. Suffering in silence became reframed as discipline and maturity, and in some cases love.
For many Filipino Americans across the Midwest and throughout the diaspora, these beliefs were reinforced through the immigrant experience itself. We watched our parents and grandparents survive impossible demands: multiple jobs, racism, financial strain, exploitation, language barriers, long commutes, caregiving responsibilities, grief of loved ones oceans away. Many carried pain quietly because that was the price of survival.
Over time, many of us internalized the idea that mental health struggles are individual weaknesses rather than natural responses to chronic pressure, displacement, and systemic stress.
Kuwento: Storytelling as Medicine
But Filipino culture also offers us a pathway toward healing.
Kuwento (storytelling) has always been one of our greatest forms of medicine. Stories passed down helped with survival, but they can also help with permission. Permission to feel. Permission to rest. Permission to ask for support.
Shame thrives in secrecy. Healing grows in shared humanity.
The story of the “perfect” professional shifts the moment she says aloud, “I’m overwhelmed.”
Not because her life suddenly becomes easier, but because vulnerability interrupts the inherited script. By being honest with herself, she realizes she is not failing her job, her family, her community, or herself. She is reclaiming her humanity.
And often, when one person tells the truth, others in the room can quietly exhale too. Sometimes, all we need is permission.
Healing is Relational, Not Individual
One of the greatest barriers to seeking support in Filipino communities is the belief that our struggles burden others. Mental health rarely feels “individual” in collectivist cultures, it feels relational. We worry about causing stress, shame, or disappointment.
But healing is relational too.
Healing happens when communities create spaces where people no longer have to emotionally perform strength to belong. It happens when we normalize checking in beyond surface-level productivity. It happens when culturally affirming therapists, community leaders, friends, and family members say: “You deserve care, too.”
Call to Action:
Writing a New Chapter Together
As Therapinxy’s Chicago-Midwest Chapter Co-Lead, I am calling on our community to remember this truth:
Mental health is not a luxury.
It is our birthright.
We are allowed to build lives that are not solely defined by surviving and sacrificing.
As we continue amplifying Filipino voices, as well as all AAPI/AANHPI voices this month, let’s also commit to changing the emotional legacy we pass forward:
Normalize deeper conversations. Ask loved ones, “How is your heart today?” not just “How’s work?”
Challenge inherited beliefs that tie worth to productivity or sacrifice.
Seek culturally affirming support where you do not have to explain or translate your experiences to be understood.
Build community spaces where storytelling, rest, vulnerability, and wellness can coexist.
Let healing become the story we tell for generations to come.