On Becoming a Chinese Adoption Therapist: Unlearning “Don’t Cry”

As a non-Chinese heritage practitioner working in China, I was always refining my multicultural competency. I had to study the cultural norms that were so natural, so integral to my clients’ lives. Occasionally, I would have to push back on norms that I felt were destructive to mental health. Early in my work at a foster home in Shanghai, I launched an all out attack on the phrase: 别哭 Bié kū. This phrase means “Don’t cry” and is uttered so often to children that it was one of the first things I learned in the Chinese language when I moved to Beijing in 2012.

The caretakers in the Shanghai foster home, though originating from different provinces and distinct mother tongues, all agreed on the importance of reminding children many times a day that they must not cry. This phrase was sometimes spoken soft like a reminder, but usually sharp and shaming. Boys would receive the harshest elocution of “Bié kū.”

By the time I worked as the in-house therapist in Shanghai, I had been well seeped in the Chinese cultural taboo of crying or expressing sadness. I had railed against this norm before and over the years, had tried to dissuade nannies, teachers, and friends from demanding that my own children repress their emotions. A dear friend of mine lost her father in May. When we went on vacation together in June, I still had no idea of her loss. She was acting different and I begged her to open up to me. She later told me that she wanted to keep her grief a secret until she was able to talk about it without crying in front of her therapist friend, who asked way too many empathetic questions.

Why is “Don’t Cry” such a destructive phrase to repeat to children?

Children from babyhood are learning that expressing emotions is a sign of weakness. Boys especially come to understand that when crying they are bringing shame onto themselves and their caretakers. Children learn that mental strength can be found in being emotionally stoic (on the outside, where it counts).

Children naturally feel a range of overwhelming emotions. Especially in an orphanage, where some children still have memories of their abandonment, sadness is a given. After hearing so many iterations of “Don’t Cry,” toddlers and school-aged children in the foster home were probably suppressing many emotions. This means that they were purposefully pushing down emotions.

When I was able to convince the kids that they could and should cry in my play therapy room, these kids were able to fully let go and bawl. However, in older children, the suppression had often morphed into repression. Repressed emotions are those that you are unconsciously suppressing. The cultural norm of “Don’t Cry” becomes a person’s own mantra rather than an outsider's reprimand.

Repressed emotion can hurt our bodies. Repressed emotion can lead to memory loss, pain, nausea, digestive problems, and headaches. Our body literally does not let us forget, even if we don’t even realize we have emotional pain.

Crying is one of the best releases for repressed emotion. Many meaningful moments in therapy are punctuated with a good cry.

I wasn’t successful at stamping out “Bié kū” from the foster home. My memorized speech in Chinese about the danger of emotional repression was no match for the deeply ingrained cultural beliefs held by the caretakers.

However, I believe I was able to help the kids question this norm, maybe just a little. My hope was that when they reached their adoptive families (for those that were lucky enough) they could start to acknowledge their sadness in a more accepting environment.

My hope was that I had put a seed of doubt in these childrens’ minds about the shame in crying. From that seed could one day sprout a healthy acceptance of all emotions.

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