Growing up Punjabi Sikhmale

November 10th

Growing up as a Punjabi Sikhmale, I was always surrounded by people, family gatherings, Gurdwara (temple) on sundays, cousins everywhere. From the outside, it looked like connection. But something I’ve realized through my own experience and my counselling practicum is that many Punjabi men and many others who were raised within the confines of traditional masculinity may feel a deep loneliness that doesn’t match how busy or social their lives seem.

A lot of us were raised with unspoken rules about emotions: be strong, don’t complain, don’t burden the family. I rarely saw the men in my family express vulnerability. They weren’t cold,just carrying the belief that emotional openness was risky or unnecessary. When emotional expression isn’t modeled, it becomes something we avoid, and that avoidance grows into isolation.

In therapy, I see how this shows up. Many men crave closeness but fear judgment or rejection. They want support but don’t know how to ask. They feel deeply but struggle to put those feelings into words. So connection happens in “safer” ways, jokes, group hangouts, sports talk, staying busy. These forms of bonding create familiarity but not always emotional closeness.

This ties into the version of masculinity many of us were raised with: strength measured by silence, responsibility, and keeping everything together. Our parents’ generation didn’t always have the space to process emotions, and we’ve inherited those patterns without realizing it. The result is a quiet loneliness, feeling unknown even while surrounded by people.

But connection doesn’t require dramatic change. It can start with naming your own emotions, sharing one honest moment with a safe person, or allowing yourself to say, “This week has been tough.” Therapy can also help build emotional language and challenge old patterns, especially for those of us raised between cultures.

If you relate to this, you’re not alone. Many Punjabi men are carrying the same internal tension: wanting closeness but not knowing how to express it. Loneliness isn’t a weakness, it’s a sign of how much we’ve been taught to hold inside. My hope is that talking about this breaks some of the stigma and helps us move toward real connection, one small step at a time.

 November 25th

One thing I’ve noticed again and again,in my own life, in my practicum sessions, and in the stories people share with me, is how deeply we avoid uncomfortable emotions. Most of us don’t even realize we’re doing it. We just distract ourselves, stay busy, keep moving, or convince ourselves that whatever we’re feeling “isn’t a big deal.”

Growing up Punjabi Sikh, emotional avoidance wasn’t something we talked about. If anything, it was normalized. Feeling sad? Go to work. Feeling overwhelmed? Push it down. Feeling guilty or ashamed? Smile through it and don’t burden anyone. It wasn’t intentional harm, it was survival. Our parents and grandparents lived through migration, instability, and economic pressure. There was no space to sit with difficult emotions, so those coping strategies became cultural habits passed down to us.

Learning ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) made me understand this avoidance differently. ACT doesn’t shame people for avoiding feelings,it explains why we do it. Avoidance serves a purpose. It’s our mind’s way of protecting us from pain, discomfort, or memories that feel too heavy. When clients tell me they don’t want to think about something, or they numb themselves with distractions, or they keep themselves constantly occupied, it isn’t laziness or weakness. It’s a protective reflex their nervous system learned long ago.

In therapy, I’ve seen how this shows up in subtle ways. Clients change the subject when emotions get close to the surface. They joke when they’re hurting. They dismiss their pain before anyone else can. And I recognize these patterns because I’ve used them too. Avoidance feels easier than honesty, especially when you’ve grown up in a culture where expressing vulnerability wasn’t modeled. Sometimes avoiding what we feel is the only way we’ve learned to function.

But here’s the paradox I’ve learned from clients and from my own work:
 The more we avoid a feeling, the bigger it becomes.
 Avoidance gives emotions space to grow in the dark. What starts as fear becomes anxiety. What starts as guilt becomes shame. What starts as sadness becomes numbness. And what starts as emotional discomfort becomes loneliness we don’t know how to explain.

When I work with clients, I’m not trying to push them into feeling everything at once. Instead, we explore the idea that avoidance is actually protecting something,often a fear of being judged, a fear of being seen differently, or a fear that acknowledging how they feel will make it real. For many Punjabi or South Asian men, avoidance protects an identity we were taught to uphold: strong, collected, reliable. But strength doesn’t mean suppressing our inner world. Strength is being able to turn toward our emotions with curiosity instead of fear.

In ACT, we talk about “making room” for feelings,not surrendering to them, not drowning in them, but acknowledging their presence. And when clients take even a small step toward sitting with a feeling instead of running from it, something shifts. The emotion softens. The story changes. And their relationship with themselves becomes more compassionate.

Avoidance isn’t a flaw,it’s a learned strategy. But healing begins when we understand what it’s protecting and gently allow ourselves to experience emotions instead of outrunning them. That’s the work I’m learning to do alongside my clients: recognizing the fear underneath avoidance and showing that feeling something, even briefly, is safer than we grew up believing.

If you’ve been avoiding something you feel, you’re not alone. Most of us are. But even acknowledging the avoidance is a step toward connection, with yourself, with your culture, and with the parts of your identity that deserve to be heard, not hidden.