Yellow Chair Collective: The Podcast
Sep 21, 2026 · 28 min · 8 segments
YCC therapist Barbara Hong interviews Dr. Han Ren about her book, The Hyphenated Life: Bridging the In-Between Spaces of Intersectional Identities. Dr. Ren is a clinical and school psychologist…
Barbara HongHost
And I really like that you write that hyphenates are especially primed to respond to fear from multiple directions, so much so that we eventually internalize this fear and become our own oppressor.
And one long-term consequence of being our own oppressor that I've seen is what you write about as chronic shame or shame as a trait.
We see this in our elders, you know, who rely on fear and shame a lot as like parenting strategies.
And it's so tricky because we can understand maybe why they use those tactics to, you know, to to parent, because we see how they think physical punishment or verbal abuse are actually necessary.
But those actions do inform our inner world and then we punish and abuse ourselves the same way.
And I was wondering if you can talk a little bit about the discomfort that we do experience when we're shifting from those fear-based actions to more love-based actions.
They're like, oh, what if I lose my edge? Like, what if I become lazy? Yeah, I'm lazy.
Well, what does complacency mean to you? What does it look like? What does it feel like? Is this still complacency if you choose it, if you opt into this as complacency? a conscious, intentional choice.
Like, I think of complacency as kind of like being swept up in something that you're just passive around.
If you choose rest, then is that the same thing? And there's always this like fear of like, oh, I'm going to be behind.
And like behind based on whose benchmarks, based on what, you know, like what is the ultimate goal at the end of your life, right? We're all going to die eventually anyway.
And people kind of forget about that when, when they are just, you know, acting from external pressures or trying to like keep up with the Joneses.
And there's a lot of expectation for that in Asian cultures and, and just, you know, immigrant cultures in general, because of the sacrifices that our families had to make in order to come to this country.
And that is something that's so like ingrained in us from an early age that we just cannot
And I really like that you write that hyphenates are especially primed to respond to fear from multiple directions, so much so that we eventually internalize this fear and become our own oppressor.
And one long-term consequence of being our own oppressor that I've seen is what you write about as chronic shame or shame as a trait.
We see this in our elders, you know, who rely on fear and shame a lot as like parenting strategies.
And it's so tricky because we can understand maybe why they use those tactics to, you know, to to parent, because we see how they think physical punishment or verbal abuse are actually necessary.
But those actions do inform our inner world and then we punish and abuse ourselves the same way.
And I was wondering if you can talk a little bit about the discomfort that we do experience when we're shifting from those fear-based actions to more love-based actions.
They're like, oh, what if I lose my edge? Like, what if I become lazy? Yeah, I'm lazy.
Well, what does complacency mean to you? What does it look like? What does it feel like? Is this still complacency if you choose it, if you opt into this as complacency? a conscious, intentional choice.
Like, I think of complacency as kind of like being swept up in something that you're just passive around.
If you choose rest, then is that the same thing? And there's always this like fear of like, oh, I'm going to be behind.
And like behind based on whose benchmarks, based on what, you know, like what is the ultimate goal at the end of your life, right? We're all going to die eventually anyway.
And people kind of forget about that when, when they are just, you know, acting from external pressures or trying to like keep up with the Joneses.
And there's a lot of expectation for that in Asian cultures and, and just, you know, immigrant cultures in general, because of the sacrifices that our families had to make in order to come to this country.
And that is something that's so like ingrained in us from an early age that we just cannot
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