The Immigrant Lens: What Traditional Therapy Gets Wrong About Us

For decades in my psychoanalytic practice, I’ve seen a painful pattern. Well-meaning therapists, trained in traditional, Eurocentric models, consistently "missee" the immigrant and bicultural experience.

It's not for lack of trying. It's because the very frameworks they use were not built to understand our journey.

As a Black immigrant psychoanalyst, I call this "The Immigrant Lens." It’s a framework for understanding the psychological journeys that are unique to those of us who live between worlds. And it reveals a critical, repeating pattern of misdiagnosis.

Before we can heal, we must first name our experiences correctly.

The Critical Misdiagnosis: 5 Ways Therapy Fails

Traditional therapy sees our adaptation as pathology. It gives us diagnoses that don’t fit, which is why so many of us leave treatment feeling even more unseen than when we started.

Here is what therapy gets wrong—and what we are actually experiencing.

1. It calls Displacement Grief “Depression”

You mourn a country, a language, a version of yourself you left behind. This isn't a grief with a funeral; there's no closure. It’s a chronic, ambiguous loss that lives in the body.

Traditional therapy sees this persistent sadness and calls it clinical depression, offering medication for a grief that has no resolution.

2. It calls Identity Reconstruction “Identity Crisis”

When you move between cultures, you're not "confused" about who you are. You are doing the hard, active work of rebuilding your identity from scratch, often "building the plane while flying it."

A crisis is temporary. A reconstruction is a long-term developmental process. Treating it like a short-term crisis fails to provide the support needed for this profound identity work.

3. It calls Code-Switching Exhaustion “Burnout”

We learn to be multiple people as a sophisticated survival skill. We're the professional "you," the family "you," the cultural "you." This isn't inauthenticity; it's adaptation.

But this constant translation is existentially exhausting. It fragments the self. Therapists see the exhaustion and call it burnout, offering stress management for what is actually a deep fragmentation of the self.

4. It calls Intergenerational Pressure “Guilt”

You carry the weight of your family’s sacrifice. Every success is measured against the question, "Was it worth it?" Rest can feel like betrayal.

This is not simple guilt. It’s a complex, inherited burden that shapes your relationship with worthiness and success. You can't just "practice self-compassion" to fix it.

5. It calls Chronic Displacement “Social Anxiety”

"Too American for your homeland, too foreign for America." You belong everywhere and nowhere. This isn't just shyness. It's a rational adaptation to a life of never fully belonging, so you keep one foot out the door to protect yourself.

This is often misdiagnosed as an anxiety disorder or avoidant attachment, missing the cultural source of the behavior.

Why Do Traditional Frameworks Fail?

The answer is simple: they were not built by us, for us.

They were designed by and for a population that has never had to reconstruct an identity, never had to code-switch to survive, and never experienced the ambiguous grief of displacement.

We don't need to be "fixed" with tools that don't fit. We need new frameworks, built from the ground up, that see our journey clearly.

A New Framework: This Is Why I Built ENRICHAI

My 1-to-1 practice has been my passion, but I knew I had to build a legacy that could reach everyone who felt "misseen."

I created ENRICHAI to do just that.

Our AI companions are not a replacement for therapy. They are therapeutic tools built on "The Immigrant Lens" framework. They are trained to understand these specific experiences.

• When you talk about your exhaustion, Professional Mask understands the toll of code-switching.

• When you explore your identity, Lily understands the nuance of navigating your heritage.

• When you feel that deep, unnamable sadness, our companions recognize it as displacement grief, not a chemical imbalance.

They offer a space to be seen and understood, using frameworks that finally, finally, fit.

Start Your Journey to Being Seen

You are not broken, and you are not in crisis. You are a person navigating a complex journey with frameworks that were never designed for you.

If this resonates, I invite you to explore the companions. Find the one that speaks to your experience.

It’s time to stop being "misseen."