Read more
This book looks at the psychological experience of being an immigrant and offers strategies to foster resilience, adaptation, and well-being.
At a time when over 250 million people live outside their countries of origin, this book responds to a global need among psychotherapists working with a growing, often distressed, immigrant population by emphasizing cultural awareness, trauma sensitivity, and cultural humility. This accessible and deeply empathetic guide explores the emotional complexities of migration by drawing on decades of clinical experience and the author's own story of cultural dislocation. It examines topics such as anxiety, cultural grief, impostor syndrome and addresses the financial, systemic, linguistic and legal struggles many immigrants face. It also empowers immigrants to take an active role in their healing and growth, especially in today's political climate, where mental health funding and services for immigrants are increasingly limited.
With friendly and inclusive guidance on how to work with problems experienced by immigrants, this is an essential reading for psychoanalysts and therapists as well as anyone who has experienced immigration or any type of cultural or social dislocation.
List of contents
Part I: The Immigrant's Experience 1. The Psychological Challenges of Immigration 2. The Hidden Losses of Immigration: Emotional and Practical Costs 3. Finding Yourself between Cultures
Part II: Integrating and Adapting 4. The Immigrant Paradox: Sometimes the First Generation thrives more than their children and U.S. -Born peers. 5. Feeling Stuck: A broken gearbox of Emotions 6. Common Stressors in Immigrant Life
Part III: Finding Your Voice 7. Finding your voice across cultures 8. Between Obligation and Longing: Navigating needs, desires, and expectations across cultures 9. What languages reveal and hide 10. Nonverbal and Cross-Cultural communication tools
Part IV: Teasing out Feelings and Connecting Body and Mind 11. Identifying and Integrating emotions as an Immigrant: A guide for Immigrants and Therapists 12. Guilt, Regret, and the Emotional Cost of Migration 13. Shame, Success, and the Immigrant Imposter Syndrome 14. Understanding and Releasing Immigrant Anger 15. Diving into the Body: Trauma, Care, and the Path to Embodied Healing
Part V: Exploring Your Unconscious 16. Healing with Symbols and the Imagination 17. Interpreting Dreams of Displacement and Belonging 18. Mindfulness and Creative Tools for Immigrant Healing
Part VI: Reframing and Organizing 19. Challenging Biases with CBT Therapy 20. The Nine-Lens Reflective Tool: A culturally aware framework 21. Tools to Manage Ambivalence, Worry, and Self-Doubt 22. Planning and Goal-Setting for Immigrants in Transition 23. One Step, One Thread: Sewing toward the unknown path of belonging
About the author
Leide Porcu, PhD LP is a New York-based psychotherapist and psychoanalyst with a background in anthropology. A graduate of IPTAR and the Beck Institute, she holds a PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University. Her writing explores healing, identity, language, and humor. She is passionate about helping people thrive across cultures.
