But What Will People Say
A South Asian interracial relationship and lifestyle podcast with your Millennial Didi, Disha Mazepa.
But What Will People Say
Breaking Free from Brown Girl Guilt
This week I'm dissecting this culturally ingrained phenomenon that's all too familiar to many in the South Asian community. Helping you gain a deeper understanding of its origins, its effects on your relationships and, most importantly, how to liberate yourself from its hold.
0:08 Breaking Free From Brown Girl Guilt
11:41 Navigating Boundaries and Guilt With Parents
21:27 Setting Boundaries for Brown Girls
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Hi everyone, welcome back to. But what Will People Say? I'm your host, deesha Mazzappa, and this is a South Asian Insuritial Relationship and Lifestyle podcast. Welcome back for another episode. Hello everybody, welcome back.
Speaker 1:We're jumping right into this week's episode because it's a solo episode, I don't really need to do like a soft intro. You might notice some background noise. I'm outside recording today because it's a beautiful, pristine fall day, so I'm living my best life right here with my pumpkin coffee, sitting in the sun, getting a little bit of color, because we're not afraid of being brown anymore, we're just living. Don't worry, I did put sunscreen on. Anyway, let's get to it.
Speaker 1:We're going into brown girl guilt territory. This is very frequently requested and I'm sure we've covered it to some extent with a bunch of guests. But I want to do an episode where we just focus on it, defining it, where it comes from and some things we can do about it. I think really understanding what the root cause of brown girl guilt can really help us move forward. You will also hear my dog in the background. I apologize, she thinks she's going to fight every dog in the neighborhood. But anyway, getting back to this, what is brown girl guilt? We can get into the minutiae of the guilt we feel in so many categories, like money and relationships and everything, but I want to keep this a little bit general.
Speaker 1:When I talk about brown girl guilt here, it's when you're seeing approval from others, constantly worrying about what other people are going to say, discomfort, prioritizing yourself, feeling like if I ever do something, that's just for me, that I'm a bad person or that you should feel guilty about that. The constant people pleasing behaviors that we see so often in our community, choosing to follow culturally approved paths, so becoming a doctor or an engineer or a lawyer, because your parents said so and nobody asked you what you actually want in life. And now you're 30 and you have no idea. Even answering that question feels too big and daunting to do. Finally, this feeling of we're in debt to our parents, that we owe them everything. They moved to this country, they made all of these sacrifices and they put a roof over your head and fed you. Therefore, you owe them the world. Let's be clear that is the literal, fucking bare minimum.
Speaker 1:I've always been of the mentality that just because you made a person, you had a kid, does not make you a parent. Just respect is earned, not a God given right. Being a parent and getting that title is earned. Making a person does not earn you the title of parent. You have to do stuff. We're going to get into what it means to be a parent in a moment. Those are the big categories of what I'm going to define as brown girl guilt, and we're going to take it from there.
Speaker 1:The first thing we need to know is where does this come from? What is this cycle of just always feeling bad about literally everything which is so exhausting when you think about it? It's that we come from a community-based culture. All of your decision-making is conditioned to be about other people. It's all very externalized and very much about what can I do to benefit the larger group or what is best for the larger group or family unit.
Speaker 1:The problem is brown girls, especially daughters, like oldest daughters in these communities, you are raised to serve others. You are raised to be an obedient daughter. You are raised to become a compliant wife who does what her husband and his parents say. All of your value is then based on your ability to follow directions. Can you do as you are told? What can you do to serve others and to never serve yourself? Because if you do, if you think about what's best for you, that makes you selfish. That's the automatic response, because you are raised to serve everybody around you and what their needs are and desires are.
Speaker 1:What happens is in our culture and you've definitely seen it where there are aunties and moms and grandmas who are completely disconnected from like society and also just like in the room, like you can kind of tell they're like they've stopped thinking about anything. They just kind of like go through the motions of life hoping to like safely make it to death, like they are not like actively engaged in their life at all. And that makes you a really it leaves you as being a bit of a shell of a person, and so the goal here is to start living, and more than just that. But we'll get to it. So that's kind of where some of this stems from that if you're a girl, you're just here to make everybody else's lives better. And here's the thing when you decide like to stop letting this like guilt culture control you, shit's gonna hit the fan. I hate to say it, but the thing is, as long as you play your part and you exist to serve other people there, that means there's people benefiting from that there. There's lots of people are all around you that are personally benefiting from your obedience, and so when you decide to stop being that obedient, compliant daughter or wife, people are gonna notice and they're going to grasp at anything and everything they can use to hold on to the control they have over you, because people don't like change and the people benefiting you definitely don't want to lose what they're getting from having you play your part. So just be prepared because it's gonna be kind of a wreck but it's gonna be worth it, I promise, and it will be in like the most minor ways.
Speaker 1:To be clear, like I've set a bunch of times on the show, one of the ways I like drew a boundary with my parents when I lived with them was not asking questions anymore, like I would just state things instead, like nothing ended with a question mark. So instead of being like, oh, can I go out tonight with my friends, it was I'm already dressed, walking out the door, me, like hey, I'm going out, I'll be home later and just leaving. And the first time I did that, let me fucking tell you, the change in the room was palpable, like the look on my parents face. They were. They were so shocked they literally didn't say anything. But then the next day, oh, I heard it from my mother what you think we don't know what you're doing. You think you're not gonna ask us to do anything, you're just gonna tell us whatever you feel like doing and you're gonna walk in and out of this house like you own it and you think you're better than us and blah, blah, blah, blah. It's exhausting, and this was like I mean at least seven or eight years ago at this point. So, and I still remember that moment because I was like and like the thing is like, when you're doing it, you're still scared because you don't know what's gonna happen, right, but then you do it and you step out and you're like I did that, pat myself on the back, I did that, okay, and there's gonna be a lot of moments like that. There's just gonna be a lot of moments where, like, you just have to like take a deep breath and like take that little step, and then you keep taking those little steps and that's how you come out on the other side.
Speaker 1:The other thing is like guilt is like a learned behavior. Right, my husband doesn't feel guilty about like doing something for himself. He has never once thought like, oh, if I buy this I don't know car thing, that like, oh, like, should I have bought that? Should I have spent that much money? Like, oh, we don't really need this? Like, literally, his thought process is I wanted it, so I bought it, period, and I'm like wow, the audacity. I wish I was raised with that. But it's learned, right, he didn't learn. He wasn't raised to like feel bad about these things, whereas we were so unlearning. That is a process and we learn to feel guilty because we come from a culture where shame and fear, which are two extremely powerful emotions, are what run the show.
Speaker 1:You use fear and shame to control everyone in the room and I mean you gotta be able to understand that, right, like, think about how often our parents will say things like oh, if you get divorced, you're gonna die. Like, think about that. Like that is a fear-based statement. That like if you were to like separate from your partner, you'll die, you'll literally be what Like that's fear? Or statements like this other auntie's daughter would never do that. And then they start comparing you.
Speaker 1:So we have this like weird brown girl competition complex which is a whole separate episode. But that's a shame statement, right? Like comparing you to someone else's daughter and be like that person's better than you. That makes you feel bad about yourself. You feel ashamed of yourself. They're like, oh, why can't I be like her, why can't I be like this person, why can't I work as hard as they are or be the perfect daughter? And then you start piling decades of statements like that on someone's shoulders and they just start to carry it and they break. And because the only way to carry it is you either break or you turn your brain off and you disassociate and you just keep on keeping on. And that's what happens when you have these like aunties that literally feel like they're a shell of a person.
Speaker 1:So we don't wanna end up in that and I know, like so many brown girls were like you're literally just going through the motions of life, like think about how many of us went through life literally just like going to school getting good grades, going to college getting good grades, going to med school getting good grades and then getting a job and then being good at our job. And then we come home, we watch Netflix and we go to sleep and we wake up and we go to work. Nowhere in there was there a pause to look up and think about literally anything else. You aren't even thinking about what you're doing, you are just going through the motions. And if somebody paused and looked you in the eye and said, hey, like, what do you think about this? Like, are you happy? And everyone's brain implodes because they've never even considered what the word happy even means. So there's that.
Speaker 1:So that is a very long rant on where brown girl guilt comes from this idea of putting family first and community first and putting so much pressure on someone that they just start to like either feel guilty if they ever choose themselves and prioritize themselves, that they're selfish for not putting everyone else first. So that's the big part here. And so then what happens is, if we never choose ourselves and we just exist to serve other people, there's this thing that happens where and I've said this a thousand times on this show that brown parents treat you like a baby even when you're an adult. So you never learn what it's like to be treated like an adult and eventually you have to start treating your parents like adults.
Speaker 1:But a lot of us treat our parents like babies. Because they treat us like babies. We've never been treated like adults. We've never been treated like someone who can get up and make their own life decisions and like accomplish things on their own or understand their own internal sense of self or dialogue. And so If we're never treated like adults and now we're treating our parents like babies too that can't handle their own feelings and emotions and reactions, there's this weird thing that happens where we start like parenting our parents. It's like a role reversal where, like, suddenly we're the parent and they're the baby and that when you think about it like it's fucked up.
Speaker 1:But what do parents do? Parents make sacrifices for their children. They put the emotional and physical needs of their child ahead of their own. Their child is what their world revolves around, right, it's making sure that this child is happy and healthy and getting everything that it needs. Especially if you're raised in like the US or like Europe or something where parenting to us, especially portrayed in like TV and movies and stuff, is like very like caring and compassionate and unconditional love. And so now we're doing those things like where we're putting our needs behind someone else's and treating our parents like we have to make sacrifices for them.
Speaker 1:It's because we look at our parents like children and we treat them like children and we are now taking on the role of being a parent and it is not your job to put their emotional needs ahead of yours. It is not your job to make sacrifices on their behalf. It is not your job to feel like you are abandoning them for putting yourself first or choosing to do something that would better serve you in your life because you're not their parent. That is not your job and that can be like hard to come to terms with, especially with this feeling of like indebtedness that we have to our parents and like I have much less of it, because I don't really have this feeling of my parents did all of this for me, because my parents, quite frankly, didn't really do much for me. Like I pretty much raised myself, and that's an episode for another day.
Speaker 1:But I know that some of you listening probably also have that feeling of like you never showed up for me, like you literally treated me like I was a burden. My mom, the day I got married, told my husband literally like wiping her hands clean, looks at my husband and goes she's your problem now. And I don't even think Michael knew what to do with himself. He was just like ha ha ha, yep, forever, and like not in, like a. He feels like I'm a problem if you literally was like your mom just called you a problem.
Speaker 1:So I don't have that feeling of owing anything to my parents, but I know many of you do, and if you don't feel like you owe them anything, that's okay too, because just because, like I said, just cause you had a kid doesn't make you a parent. Like you have to fucking show up for them and do stuff, and some of your parents didn't do that, mine definitely didn't. So fuck them. Anyway, there's a lot of anger there. Guys, I'm in therapy for it, don't worry. Anyway, moving on, I took so many notes and I tried to organize them, but not sure if that worked. All right, but anyway, now we know where it stems from. Now we kind of see this like weird role reversal thing where we become parents and we're making all these sacrifices.
Speaker 1:The goal truly here is to find a balance right, finding a balance between your needs and your parents' needs. Understanding the root cause of all of this skill makes it easier to not feel it so much, you know, to not feel like, oh, like I'm choosing to end up in a career in music and now I'm gonna be an embarrassment to my family. It's like no, our culture taught us that You're not an embarrassment to anybody. You're doing what's best for you and that's okay. So there's a lot of like cognitive retraining, I guess, around that and I'm not a therapist so I cannot help you with that. But I think just like being self-aware is very helpful and remembering that like they are adults, just cause they don't act like it doesn't mean they're not adults. They are. They're just not very good at it and because they're doing the best they can and we get that okay.
Speaker 1:Like we can be compassionate towards our parents and the things they went through, but we don't have to justify the way they treated us either. Like just because you had a traumatic childhood doesn't mean you get to like now take it out on me Like children. You are born and you didn't ask to be born and you don't deserve to be treated like that. You just don't. Like I get it. Our parents went through a lot of shit, but like you're not the punching bag Whether that's verbally, emotionally, physically, like any of you are not responsible for that. Like that's on them. They can unpack that on their own time. If they don't believe in therapy, that's on them, like there's just nothing you can do about it.
Speaker 1:But some things you can do to kind of move forward from all of this is setting boundaries, which can be really hard, like I talked about. Just that small switch of I don't ask you to do things. I just tell you what I'm up to out of respect, right, I'm not just walking out of the house Like I'm telling you what I'm doing and where I'm going. If you can't handle that information, then we might have to take away giving you that information. So why don't you show me you can handle it? And like being firm in those boundaries and like.
Speaker 1:I think where I struggle is a lot of the like. Instagram advice about boundary setting is very like what it was sanitized. It like takes away the humanity in it. It's like statements of like you know I, you know you're really disrespecting like my boundaries right now by saying that and it's just like nobody hears that and like listens to it and like gives shit, like no brown parent cares that. You said that, you know, and it just like it takes. It's messier than that and I think it's more a matter of like just saying like nope, I'm not interested in that, and kind of making it very clear to your parents.
Speaker 1:But understanding that like saying some like pre-written textbook sentence isn't gonna work either. Like you gotta find a way to communicate with your parents and also understand that like they might not be interested. Cause thinking about how many brown parents like my mom I've literally told her a thousand times like stop commenting on my clothes, stop commenting on my weight. And yet she does it every week. And that's where I just like have learned that like I can't control her, I can only control me. She knows what she's doing is wrong, cause I have told her that. But at this point it's not on me and I'm not gonna take it personally. I'm just gonna be like listen. If she doesn't wanna like be a better person, that's on her and that's fine. Carry on. I'm gonna go live my life. But guess what? Because she continues to disrespect that line of the commentary with her, she just can't fucking help herself.
Speaker 1:I just don't visit it often, like my parents don't live far from me. But it's like if you can't respect the way I expect you to treat me, then you don't get the privilege of me being in your life as often as you want me to. Like they live not far from me at all. I could probably walk to my parents house, but guess what, they're lucky if I show up once every six to eight weeks and even then, if I'm not in the mood, I'm just not gonna go and I'm not gonna feel bad about it Because that's on them. Like they have been told over and over again why I don't like the way they speak to me or the way they treat me or the things they've said to me. Like I've brought them gifts and these people literally like complained and I'm like you are, I don't even know what this is Like you're clearly off your rocker that you don't know how to just say thank you when you get a gift. But guess what? That's on you. It has nothing to do with me and not taking it personally, but taking it personally because I'm never gonna brought you a gift ever again. Now that's on you because you didn't know how to fucking handle it the first time. So that sounds mean and like I'm being like overly aggressive towards my parents because there's a lot of anger there. But it just is what it is and I'm gonna do what's best for me. So here I am.
Speaker 1:So boundaries, in whatever way you have to set them. Set them, whether that means not visiting them as often as they want you to not calling them all the time because they said so, choosing to say no to invitations, or deciding to go and realizing like, okay, you know what, maybe they have a three strike rule right, because so many of our parents are never gonna change. And you go, and if they get three strikes in your head of things that you don't like, that they say or do that's when you leave. Or you say I'm gonna go for an hour and I'm gonna leave, I'm not gonna feel bad about it, I showed my face. Those are all ways to set boundaries and it's whatever works for you. There's no like right way to do it.
Speaker 1:The other thing self-care. As much as I feel like self-care in the Western world is just like shilling out bad advice to most people. I think for brown girls, like there is a special level of like trauma we all live with and I don't use that word lightly but like we aren't even taught to like do anything for ourselves. Like buying ourselves a coffee is enough to feel guilty for most of us A fucking what? Three to six dollar coffee like most of you listening are probably doctors or something way more professional than I will ever be. Like you probably have a very like well-paying and successful job. A six dollar coffee is not gonna break the bank and you don't have to justify it with anything Like we feel bad. And then we start justifying like oh, I have a really busy day today or oh, I had a really long week so I'm treating myself, or you know like, oh, I have like so much work to do so I like need the caffeine and it's like maybe you just buy it because you like pumpkin spice and that's it and that's the only reason and that's okay.
Speaker 1:So I think self-care in all of this and whatever way that looks like for you whether that's doing little things for yourself, like getting your nails done or getting your hair done, or just saying no to an invitation and having a night in and taking a bath and reading a book, or going to the gym and working out, getting a personal trainer and not feeling bad about it, I think and the thing is like, especially with self-care and stuff, like the easiest way to like not feel so bad about it is like to quantify some of it as like a value-based thing instead of like, oh, this is this like frivolous, excessive thing. For example, like my husband and I we always say, like you don't feel bad about spending money on your health, like money on our kind of expensive gym membership, money on personal training, money on like a massage therapist to help work out some kinks and you know, from a work, whatever, those are all going towards our health. Or like going to therapy right, that self-care. We don't feel bad about any of that because, first of all, it's a value for us. Like that's the biggest thing. It adds value to our lives. Our health and wellness is important to us. You never feel bad about it and I'm still not good at it. Like I'm not sitting here preaching like I'm so good at this because I literally the other month was like, oh, I really miss having a personal trainer. But like it's really expensive and he's like don't feel bad about spending money on your health. Like you're never gonna regret having worked with a personal trainer. You enjoy it, it keeps you motivated, it helps you progress in terms of your fitness goals. Like do it. If you wanna do personal training, go sign up for it and sometimes it's really helpful to help partners who can help be that external voice for us, because we're not great at that. We'll get to our internal voices. That's a point I have written somewhere.
Speaker 1:And overall, like the biggest goal is to gain our own self-confidence, to detach our self-worth from our ability to serve others and attach it to something a little healthier like ourselves. Because if our self-worth is attached to that, we're going to be left living on other people's terms for a long time. And confidence comes over time and I've said this a million times. But like, confidence comes with every step you take in a different direction and realizing like you're not falling apart. Right, like so many of our guests. Like they'll talk about divorce or people listening might be divorced. If your parents told you like if you get divorced you'll die. But guess what? You got divorced and you didn't die. You're still here living on two feet taking care of yourself. Now you gained a little bit of confidence that like, oh, I took this step and I'm still here and I'm making it happen and so you just have to keep taking those baby steps and show yourself that like you will be okay and it just takes time. Like that's all I got for the confidence part.
Speaker 1:And then, like, when it comes to all of these thoughts because when you think about guilt and stuff, all these things I'm saying a lot of them are things we're hearing in our head, right Like the voices in our head, and we, let me tell you, the voices in your head can make or break you and a lot of people I would say most people, most kids grow up and their, the voices in your head are basically created by your parents. So the first thing you have to do when you're feeling overwhelmed or feeling guilty is like separate, like ask yourself is this a thought or is this a feeling? Because those are two separate things. So that's step one. And then step two is asking are the voices in your head your own or are they your parents? And there's a very good chance it's your parents voice, because when you go and buy a coffee and your thought to yourself is, oh, I'm such a bad person, I'm wasting money, like I don't need this, like I'm just throwing money away, I don't care about anything, like I'm so lazy that I'm just buying coffee instead of making it at home, is that you saying that? Or is that something your parents would have said to you if they were standing on your shoulder watching you buy a coffee.
Speaker 1:Because once you can separate that, you can start to like recalibrate that voice in your head, to try to find where your voice is and what your voice should sound like in your head. Because a lot of these like kind of toxic guilt rid and broken thought patterns are just the things our parents said to us over and over and over again, and so it's like even when they're not here, they're right in your head tearing you down and being overly critical, telling you you're a failure, telling you that you're not working hard enough, like you don't think that you know you're working hard enough. You know you're doing your best, but if that's what you keep hearing in your head, it's a good chance. It's your parents also good time for therapy? Definitely something working with a therapist can help you sort out, but at least being cognizant of it can make it so that it's not something that's totally like controlling your every action, because that's not good and ultimately bottom line is the goal is I don't just want you to start living, I don't just want you to start going from a shell of a person going through motions to like, oh, I'm going to live my life like I want you to grab life by the balls. Okay, I want you to take that shit and run, because the only thing anyone here has to do is die. And before we get there, I hope you guys have the most incredible love filled, joy filled life you possibly can. It's starting to get windy out here. I think this is a good point to wrap this up. Thanks so much for tuning in and I will see you guys next time. Bye, thanks so much for tuning in, guys.
Speaker 1:Make sure, if you enjoyed this episode, you leave us a review on iTunes. You can find the show on all major streaming platforms. You can find me on Instagram at DishaMazeppa. You can shop my Etsy shop, disha Mazeppa Designs. Find out everything you want to know about this show at DishaMazeppacom, and if you or someone you know would like to be a guest, you can email bwpspodcastatgmailcom. And I'll see you guys next time. Bye. This podcast is hosted and produced by Disha Mystery Mazeppa. The project for the show was created by Crackswell.