When you feel like you live between two Worlds
When You Feel Like You Live
Between Two Worlds
Blooming freely — exactly as you are.
You know the feeling. You walk into a room and quickly read the temperature — assessing whether you belong, whether you need to shrink, whether anyone here will actually understand you without a lengthy explanation. You’ve been doing this your whole life. It’s exhausting in a way that’s hard to put into words, because it’s not a single event. It’s the accumulation of a thousand small moments of not-quite-fitting.
Maybe you’re a second-generation immigrant in Kansas City — raised between two cultures, belonging fully to neither. Or maybe you’re queer or trans, and you’ve spent years learning which parts of yourself are safe to share and which need to stay hidden. Maybe it’s both. Maybe it’s something harder to name: just a persistent sense that the world wasn’t quite built with you in mind.
If that resonates, this post is written specifically for you. And I’d like to introduce you to someone who understands this from the inside out.
The Weight of Living Between Worlds
There’s a particular kind of grief that comes with straddling identities. Psychologists sometimes call it cultural bereavement — the mourning of belonging, of a complete self, of a place where you don’t have to translate your experience before sharing it. It’s not depression exactly, though it can look like it. It’s not anxiety exactly, though it can feel like it. It’s the weight of perpetually narrating your own existence.
For second-generation immigrants living and working in Kansas City — in neighborhoods like Waldo, Westport, Brookside, or across the metro — this experience often takes a specific shape. You were raised by parents who sacrificed enormously, which generates both deep love and complex guilt. You absorbed their hopes, their fears, their unspoken wounds. And somewhere in that inheritance, you also absorbed pain that wasn’t originally yours to carry.
This is what’s sometimes called intergenerational trauma: the way that unhealed pain moves through families, often silently, showing up in the body, in relationship patterns, in the way you talk to yourself when no one is watching. It’s not a weakness. It’s not a character flaw. It’s a wound that was passed down before you had words for it.
“Healing isn’t about fixing what’s wrong with you. It’s about making room for everything you’ve been carrying — and deciding what you actually want to keep.”
When Identity Becomes the Wound
For LGBTQ+ individuals — particularly queer and trans people of color, or those navigating faith communities, conservative family systems, or both — identity itself can be a source of chronic stress. The clinical term is minority stress: the cumulative psychological burden of living in a world that does not fully affirm who you are. Over time, that burden doesn’t just stay emotional. It settles into the body. It shapes how safe you feel, how much you trust, how freely you let yourself take up space.
If you’ve experienced rejection from family, religious community, or peers because of your identity, you’ve likely also experienced grief — sometimes a grief so layered it’s hard to name. The grief of the family you needed to have. The grief of belonging you had to sacrifice in order to be honest. The grief of years spent suppressing the truest parts of yourself — not because you wanted to, but because you had to in order to survive. That grief is real. And it deserves a space that actually honors it.
Like water finding its way through, healing moves forward when given the right conditions.
What Therapy Can Actually Do for You
When people from marginalized communities come to therapy, they often carry a specific fear: that their therapist won’t get it. That they’ll spend the first few sessions explaining context that should already be understood — teaching their therapist what it means to be both queer and Vietnamese American, or what it’s like to be a second-generation immigrant balancing family obligation with personal freedom. That their therapist will offer generic tools that don’t account for the specific texture of their experience.
That fear is valid, because that experience is common. And it’s exactly why who your therapist is matters as much as what they do.
Signs therapy might be the right next step for you
- You feel caught between your family’s expectations and your own sense of self — and the tension never fully resolves
- Anxiety or depression feels connected to your identity, your history, or your sense of belonging — not just everyday stress
- You’re carrying grief that doesn’t have a clear name — loss of belonging, loss of community, loss of a version of yourself
- You find yourself code-switching constantly and feel exhausted by it
- Relationships feel harder than they should — trust is difficult, closeness feels risky
- You’re a teen or young adult still forming your sense of who you are, without enough support around you
- You’ve tried therapy before but didn’t feel truly seen by your therapist
EMDR and Intergenerational Trauma: Going Deeper Than Talk
One of the most important tools for healing identity-related and intergenerational trauma is EMDR — Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. EMDR is an evidence-based therapy that helps the brain process experiences that got “stuck” — traumatic memories, inherited beliefs, and emotional wounds that standard talk therapy often can’t fully reach.
What makes EMDR particularly valuable for second-generation immigrants and LGBTQ+ individuals is its ability to address implicit trauma — the kind that doesn’t have a clear narrative but shows up in your body, in your reactions, in the way you freeze when someone questions your identity. EMDR helps reprocess these experiences so they lose their charge, allowing you to hold your history without being controlled by it.
At gokc, EMDR is one of the tools our trained clinicians use alongside relational therapy, somatic awareness, and culturally grounded conversation. For many clients, it’s the approach that finally moves the needle.
Meet Lisa Hoang, LMSW
Lisa Hoang is one of those therapists who brings lived understanding into the room alongside clinical training. As a queer, second-generation Vietnamese American woman, Lisa doesn’t need you to explain the basics — she already holds them. What she offers is something rare: the combination of personal resonance, professional rigor, and a deeply warm, honest presence that meets people exactly where they are.
Lisa Hoang
Lisa specializes in LGBTQ+ affirming care, trauma and PTSD, and intergenerational trauma. She works with second-generation immigrants, queer and trans clients, and anyone navigating the intersection of identity, culture, and mental health.
She earned her Master of Social Work from the University of Kansas. She sees clients in person at gokc’s Brookside office Tuesday through Saturday, and via telehealth throughout Missouri and Kansas.
Sliding scale available. Accepting new clients now.
You might be a great fit for Lisa if you:
- Are a second-generation immigrant navigating family expectations, cultural identity, and the pressure to belong in multiple worlds
- Identify as LGBTQ+ and are looking for an affirming therapist who understands queerness from lived experience
- Are carrying intergenerational or ancestral trauma — pain passed down before you had words for it
- Are dealing with trauma or PTSD and ready to process it with a trained, compassionate guide
- Struggle with anxiety or depression connected to identity, belonging, or history
- Are working through grief — including the grief of things that are hard to name
- Are a teen or young adult in the Kansas City area exploring who you are and where you fit
“Therapy with me isn’t about ‘fixing’ you. It’s about creating space to explore what’s been heavy, what’s been hidden, and what needs to be honored.” — Lisa Hoang
You don’t have to have your story fully sorted before you reach out. What you need is a therapist who can sit with complexity, hold multiple truths at once, and meet you exactly where you are. If you’re in Kansas City — Brookside, Waldo, Overland Park, Prairie Village, Lee’s Summit, or anywhere across the metro — and you’ve been waiting for a therapist who truly gets it, Lisa may be exactly who you’ve been looking for.
Ready to Feel Seen?
Lisa is currently accepting new clients at gokc’s Brookside office and via telehealth throughout Missouri and Kansas. Sliding scale available. Your first step is just a conversation.
Schedule a Free Consultation Meet Lisa →