You’ve been thinking about it for months. Maybe longer. You finally made the appointment – or at least opened the tab, typed in the search, gotten close. And then your mom calls.
She asks how you are. You say fine. And the conversation ends the way it always does: with so much unsaid, and the weight of it sits on your shoulders.
Bringing up therapy to immigrant parents – especially parents who came to Canada with very little, who survived things they never named, who built a life with very little support – is one of the more challenging conversations a second-generation person can try to have. In every community where immigrant families have put down roots, this conversation is happening – or not happening – every day.
This post is for the people who want to try.
Why Immigrant Parents Often Don’t Believe in Therapy
Before we talk about how, it helps to understand why.
For many immigrant parents, therapy as a concept belongs to a world they didn’t grow up in. In many cultures across South Asia, East and Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, SWANA, and Africa, emotional suffering was something you moved through with family, with faith, with community, with the sheer necessity of survival. Going to a stranger to talk about your feelings wasn’t an option. Often, it wasn’t even a concept.
And that didn’t always signal dysfunction. For many of our parents, community was the mental health system. Elders held wisdom. Ritual held grief. Collective care held individuals when they fell.
What many immigrant parents carry, often without naming it, is their own unprocessed pain. Migration grief. Intergenerational trauma. The weight of starting over in a country that didn’t always welcome them. Therapy wasn’t something they had access to. And sometimes, that means it lands as a threat: If you needed therapy, what does that say about what I gave you? Was it not enough? What will people say?
Understanding this doesn’t make the conversation easier. But it makes it more compassionate – for them, and for you.
What They’re Actually Hearing When You Say “Therapy”
When you say the word therapy to a parent who grew up without it, they may hear several things at once:
- You think I failed you.
- You’re telling outsiders our family’s business.
- Something is seriously wrong with you.
- You’re being ungrateful for everything we sacrificed.
None of this is what you mean. But it may be what lands.
This is why the conversation often goes sideways before it starts – not because your parent doesn’t love you, but because the word carries weight you can’t fully control. In many communities, mental health struggles are still associated with shame, weakness, or spiritual failure. The idea that you’d admit to needing help – let alone pay someone for it – can feel incomprehensible or embarrassing to a parent who survived by never letting anyone see them struggle.
Knowing this is not about you changes how you might go about starting the conversation.
How to Actually Have the Conversation
There is no script that works every time. These are not tricks. They are approaches that honour both you and your parent.
1. Don’t lead with the word “therapy” if you can help it.
Try language that feels less clinical and more relatable: talking to someone, a kind of counselling, support for stress, a professional I can process things with. Some families respond better to framing it as a health issue – it’s like going to the doctor, but for stress – especially if there’s already openness around physical health.
2. Lead with what you’re experiencing, not what you need from them.
I’ve been struggling with a lot of stress lately and I found someone who can help me think through it lands differently than I need therapy and I want you to support me. The first invites curiosity. The second can activate defensiveness.
3. Separate the conversation from their approval.
If you are an adult making your own decisions about your mental health, you do not need permission, but you may want connection. Consider whether you’re asking for their blessing or just telling them. Knowing which one you need (and whether it’s realistic) protects you from expecting something that may not be available right now.
4. Expect the first conversation not to land.
That’s okay. Seeds take time. Many second-gen people describe a parent who dismissed therapy, then asked questions six months later, then quietly admitted they might have found it helpful themselves. The conversation doesn’t have to resolve in one sitting.
5. If they push back hard, don’t argue about whether therapy is valid.
Seeking to win this debate isn’t worth the relational rupture it may lead to. Instead, stay close to your own experience: I know it’s not how you grew up dealing with things. For me, it’s helping. I just wanted you to know. That’s enough.
Finding Immigrant Parents Therapy Support in Toronto, Hamilton, Vaughan, and Richmond Hill
If you’re in the Greater Toronto Area and looking for culturally responsive support – either for yourself as a second-gen person navigating this dynamic, or because a family member has actually become open to it – the good news is that the landscape has grown.
Toronto and its surrounding cities, (including Hamilton, Vaughan, and Richmond Hill), are home to large and diverse South Asian, East Asian, Black Caribbean, West African, Latin American, and Middle Eastern communities. Many BIPOC therapists in these areas have a lived experience and lens at exactly this intersection: the second-generation experience, immigrant family dynamics, cultural stigma around mental health, and the complexity of loving parents who were never taught that their own pain mattered.
What to look for:
- Therapists who list family systems or intergenerational trauma in their bio
- Those who describe culturally responsive or anti-oppressive approaches (meaning they won’t pathologize your family’s collectivism or tell you to simply set boundaries)
- Languages: if your parent might eventually become open to their own support, look for therapists who work in Tagalog, Mandarin, Cantonese, Tamil, Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu, Spanish, Somali, or Arabic, the linguistic barrier is often the practical one
Ready to find support? Browse BIPOC therapists in Toronto and the GTA who specialize in family and culturally responsive care → Find a therapist at Healing in Colour
When Your Parent Don’t Come Around — And What To Do With That
Some parents will not shift. Not because they don’t love you, but because their own survival required keeping certain doors permanently closed. This is a grief of its own: the realization that the person you most want to understand you may not be able to.
You can still heal. You are allowed to access support that your parents couldn’t or wouldn’t. Your healing doesn’t require their permission, their understanding, or even their awareness.
And sometimes, in ways that happen quietly, over years, your willingness to break the silence does something for them too. Not always. Not guaranteed. But the work you do on yourself ripples in directions you can’t predict.
If you’re carrying the weight of a family that doesn’t yet have language for what you’re experiencing, you are not alone. This is one of the defining tensions of the second-generation experience. It is also one of the things culturally responsive therapy is specifically equipped to hold.
You Deserve Support That Doesn’t Require You to Explain Your Family First
The right therapist won’t ask you to choose between your culture and your mental health. They won’t frame your family’s collectivism as dysfunction, or suggest that the solution is simply to create distance. They will understand that your parents’ worldview came from somewhere real, and so did yours.
If you’ve been searching for that kind of support in Toronto, Hamilton, Vaughan, or Richmond Hill, we can help.
At Healing in Colour, our directory connects BIPOC clients with therapists who understand the specific weight of immigrant family dynamics, cultural stigma, and second-generation complexity.
You’ve been carrying this long enough. You’re allowed to put some of it down.
Browse culturally responsive therapists near you →
Additional Resources
Find an anti-oppressive BIPOC therapist in Canada from your diaspora
- Find a therapist from your diaspora on our Therapist Directory
Related Reading
- How to Find a BIPOC Therapist in Canada: A Guide
- First-Generation Immigrant Trauma: When Success Doesn’t Heal the Weight You Carry
- Depression in Second-Generation Immigrants: Why You Feel Guilty for Struggling
Not ready for therapy yet?
- Explore our Resources page for community organizations and mental health tools
- Follow us on Instagram for first-gen mental health content
- Join our newsletter for monthly immigrant mental health resources
About Healing in Colour
Healing in Colour is a directory of BIPOC therapists and allied professionals across Canada who are committed to anti-oppressive values. We envision a world where BIPOC, in all our intersections, have access to therapy that supports our healing and liberation.
Learn more: About Us |Our Statement of Values