AWA: Academic Writing at Auckland

Upon enrolling into this course I had the intention and expectation to learn theories and concepts—as I would in any academic endeavour. Considering the nature of the course, that is, the counselling aspect, I also intended and expected to learn about the subjective experiences and social realities of individuals from different worlds. Looking back on my first two weeks of lectures, I dutifully jotted down notes and ensured all concepts that were to be taught were well understood by me before the lecture began. Soon, I noticed that my pen was absent from my hand, and rather than concerning myself with whether or not I understood the concepts well before the lecture, I instead found myself in constant contemplation of the fascinating, sublime experiences made salient by my lecturers. I found my eyes transfixed and my ears spellbound to the lecturer in front of me; and on occasion, gripped by the stories shared by my fellow classmates, who often spoke about their own experiences relevant to the lectures. However, two lectures, in particular, threw me deeper into introspection relative to the rest. Whereas other subjects were captivating due to my learning of other experiences, ‘Working with Asian Communities’, and ‘Working with Grief and Loss’ was engrossing simply because of the profound personal insights I had garnered from these lectures.

To begin to illustrate the importance of these insights, I must first elucidate the foundations from which such insights may be derived—that is, my life. I am the middle child of three children, the son of my father, a successful civil engineer, and my mother, a clinical social worker. We moved from the Philippines to New Zealand when I was only 8-years-old. My parents were civil engineers and clinical social workers no longer; instead, they were minimum-wage workers at a factory. Growing up during this great upheaval, I never fully understood the reasons as to why my parents were always stressed and why things seemed different. All I could remember at the time was the constant fighting between my parents, the sounds of enraged yells piercing my ears, reverberating in our two-bedroom house. Learning English was easy for me, learning the new culture was fun, and making new friends proved effortless. Though only a child, I noticed that as I became integrated into New Zealand culture, it became more difficult to communicate with my parents. I was torn between two worlds: the new one, symbolised by my new school, new friends, and new language; and the old, my parents, our house, and all the restrictions that came with it. Growing up I learnt to despise my parents: reflecting with disdain how their vitriol towards me signalled their unreasonable discontent. In some ways, I felt shackled and mired by my indignation—forever putting the cause at the helm of my parent's crass exclamations.

Our lecture on working with Asian communities taught me that culture shock and mental health susceptibility within new Asian migrants may have been the cause of some of the familial problems I experienced during childhood. I learnt to have more compassion towards my parents; understanding further just how difficult it must have been for them to adjust to a new country, further exacerbated by the disposal of their previous professional identities. Rather than view my painless transition into a new culture as a reflection of my inherent ability, I instead become grateful and empathic for the unimaginable difficulties my parents underwent. Instead of looking back at my father’s echoes of rage during my tumultuous adolescence, I instead see it as cries of pain; throes manifest. This is not to say, however, that my parents could not have exercised more tenderness when raising me or considered the effects of their bitter criticisms. It is simply to explicate and disentangle the very origins of our conflicts. By virtue of my learnings of the lived experience of Asian migrants, and indeed their struggles, the dark recesses of my tempestuous youth can now be illuminated.

Though the origins and source of my parent's historic struggles can be partially attributed to the culture shock often experienced by Asian migrants, the genesis of my depression is less conspicuous. Without a doubt, depression is, in my life, my most pervasive conundrum. During the ‘Working with Grief and Loss’ lecture, I was tempted to ask a question which queried our lecturer on her moral belief regarding death. Our discussion was surrounding the idea that ‘there was no right way to grieve.’ Considering my lifelong battle with depression, death, naturally, has been at the forefront of my mind. In my journey to rid myself of the afflictions unequivocally tied with depression, I sought help from health professionals of all sorts: from general practitioners absent of mental health training, psychologists wielding evidence-based approaches, humanistic counsellors armed with Rogerian processes, psychotherapists hoping to ameliorate perceived ailments within my unconscious, and recently-graduated upstarts hoping to consider me as a statistic to add into their nascent research projects. Though I ventured through the gamut of practitioners rightly entrenched in their own organisational affiliations, theoretical models, and career objectives, I surprisingly found a view concurrent among them: that to consider death is contemptible and to pursue life is virtuous. As someone who views death as a worthy destination, an answer to my present maladies, and an escape from the sufferings unequivocally associated with existence, I could not help but consider purveyors and postulators of this view unworthy of my future recognition. Here I was, someone who has had severe depression for over two decades, hoping others would recognise and respect my purview, my own world—yet all seemed to foremost want to save me, from myself.

It was not until I challenged my lecturer’s personal, and indeed, professional perspective on the matter that I finally felt understood. I, more or less, asked: “Considering there is no right way to grieve, would you say that suicide is one right way to grieve?” Understandably, they gauged with caution, but above all, they spoke with genuineness—an attribute absent in my previous encounters with professionals and practitioners alike. From my recollection, they propounded: “If someone thought that suicide was a way to grieve, then I’d consider it very sad, but it is my moral obligation above all to try to help them.” Though both these quotes, from myself and lecturers, may not be entirely accurate, my experience cannot be discounted; that is, I felt that my perspective was valid, and it mattered. Indeed, she considered, from her perspective, that one’s view of suicide as a solution is ‘very sad,’ but in no way was she attempting to instil or inculcate the idea that it is objectively ‘wrong.’ What I gathered, and hope that I myself am able to encompass in my practice, is that our duty as practitioners is to help people not in spite of their views, but with respect to their views. That is to say, that we must first and foremost seek to understand the very worlds from which those seeking help inhabit, and in doing so, we practice with genuine consideration the validity of their lived exp