Log Kya Kahenga?
What will people say?
Desi folks already understand the weight of that question. Zohra Lasi, a therapist and clinical mental health counselor (and the voice behind the TikTok account @therapysherapy) is very familiar with the weight of that phrase—she works with South Asian American adults navigating anxiety, shame, people pleasing, and the painstakingly slow work of unlearning a lifetime of conditioning.
Her boots-on-the-ground experience overlaps with the research behind the Brown Voices Project—and the same patterns that show up in K-12 schools show up decades later in a therapist’s office!
I sat down with Zohra for the Brown Voices project to talk about what she’s actually seeing — and what parents, teachers, and South Asian American adults can do about it.
This phrase—that anchors Zohra’s clinical work (and is a core driver in most South Asian Americans’ lives) is about fear of external judgment. From strangers, from community, from family… and it drives so many of our decisions.
“A lot of our decisions are guided by how people are going to perceive us — will my family have to hear about this? That fear is not personal. It’s: is my family gonna have to feel some type of way about it? Log kya kahenge is a dream killer.”
Zohra Lasi
What makes it particularly insidious is that it’s so normalized… most people don’t question what they can’t see as a problem. And when you don’t question something, you don’t challenge it which means it becomes part of a cycle, and then it moves into the next generation intact…
“Here we are, generations later, still stuck in the same issues because nobody challenged it.”
Zohra Lasi
One of the most striking moments in our conversation was when Zohra connected the fear of external judgment directly to classroom behavior… and to how South Asian American students relate to teachers specifically.
“How we felt around our parents in times of distress is how we’re gonna feel around authority figures in our adulthood. A teacher is an authority figure. So when we feel that panic, a lot of our protective mechanism is: let me appease, let me outperform, maybe the blow will be lesser.”
Zohra Lasi
This produces a student who works harder not out of genuine engagement but out of fear of disappointing… and who stops socializing, turns down sleepovers, and puts their head down. Parents often praise exactly this behavior, which reinforces the cycle.
“Parents would be like, wow, look at my child saying no to plans. What a great child. But we’re not thinking that that is loss of childhood. That child is not doing age-appropriate things.”
Zohra Lasi
The model minority myth, she adds, operates on two levels at once: (1) external expectations from teachers, and (2) the same expectations reinforced at home.
Which means the pressure Brown kids feel isn’t coming from one direction. It’s coming from everywhere simultaneously.
Zohra’s actual advice for parents of South Asian American kids is clear:
“Replace your concern, your internal judgment about your child, your fear. Replace all of that with curiosity. Go to your child and be curious about what this pressure is. And brace yourself for feedback. Sit in the discomfort of that feedback without reacting.”
Zohra Lasi
She acknowledges that it’s hard, especially for parents whose own parents never modeled curiosity with them. And she’s equally honest about what happens when parents can’t sit in that discomfort.
“What we could have done with the information we received from our child is grow. But what we did was go into shame spirals, and now it’s become a pride thing and an ego thing. And that’s it: we’ve lost the battle.”
Zohra Lasi
Her closing advice for educators and families…
“Your highest performing child might be going through a lot of internal battles that we don’t see because it’s masked by their success. Walk into a room with curiosity rather than judgment. The second you walk in with judgment, that is not a safe space for that child.”
Zohra Lasi
And for the South Asian Americans watching, another piece of advice that blew my mind (because what do you mean I never considered myself part of the log?):
“When you think about log kya kahenge, think about you as part of the log. You have a seat on that table. What would you think about you if you made this decision?”
Zohra Lasi
I loved talking to Zohra, and am so glad to have had her on the podcast.
I highly recommend following Zohra at @TherapySherapy on TikTok, and subscribing to the Brown Voices Podcast wherever you get your podcasts (available on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube). And go to therapy 🙂
This conversation is part of the Brown Voices Project — an ongoing series of conversations bridging the research behind Brown Voices: South Asian American Experiences in Schools with the lived and clinical experiences of South Asian Americans across roles and generations.
Read the book: Brown Voices: South Asian American Experiences in Schools.
Thank you for reading.
— Punita
