The reason Hailey, who is 33 years old, keeps her job a secret from her family

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For a long time, Hailey Lin’s job has been a mystery to her extended family.

Whenever her mother, who lives in Hong Kong, is asked about Lin by relatives and friends, she tells them she’s a social worker “doing psychotherapy things” in Australia.

But in fact, the Hong Kong-born 33-year-old does more than just psychotherapy: she works as a clinical psychosexual therapist in Sydney, where she helps people explore sex and relationships.

Lin says despite her mother’s reluctance to disclose her occupation, she is supportive of it.

“She can be open-minded, but also she can be very conservative because it is not the norm in Asian culture [to talk] about sex or intimacy,” Lin tells SBS Podcast Chinese-ish.

A woman in a black dress is giving a presentation to the audience members seated in a room.

As one of the few psychosexual therapists with a Chinese background in Australia, Hailey Lin says she feels it’s her responsibility to promote sex education for the community. Source: Supplied / Hailey Lin

Ronald Hoang has had a similar experience.

Growing up in a Vietnamese-Chinese Australian household, Hoang watched his cousins become doctors, lawyers and pharmacists — professions his parents enthusiastically endorsed.

But he decided to take a different pathway, specialising as a relationship and family therapist, which involves helping couples navigate love, intimacy and family systems.

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Even after years of practice, Hoang says his mother still feels confused about his work.

“I’m pretty sure she still doesn’t know what I do. The way she describes it is that I work with ‘crazy people’,” the 36-year-old says.

But she’s accepting … I think she understands it a bit better nowadays.

Despite mixed reactions from their parents, Hoang and Lin are determined to change the prevailing narratives and taboos around sex and relationships within the Chinese Australian community — and part of a small number of therapists with Chinese backgrounds who offer specialised counselling on the topic.

A young man in academic regalia, holding a degree, poses with his family.

Family and relationship therapist Ronald Hoang decided to pursue a different career pathway from his cousins. Source: Supplied / Ronald Hoang

‘Like a foreign language’

According to 2021 Census data, there are 4,026 psychotherapists — a category that includes psychosexual therapists — in Australia. Only 80 of them speak Mandarin, Cantonese or other Chinese dialects at home.

Of that cohort, 42 were born in China, Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan, making the pool of sex and relationship therapists with Chinese cultural and linguistic knowledge very small.

Because of this, Lin and Hoang say they find their services particularly popular among Asian clients, who feel they have a cultural shorthand.

Hoang says he noticed the influx of Asian Australian clients when he started his private practice.

A man in a blue shirt is smiling as he writes in a notebook placed on a round wooden table in front of him.

Ronald Hoang says many Asian clients come to him because they feel a connection to his Vietnamese-Chinese background. Source: Supplied / Ronald Hoang

“I do get a lot more Asian clients who specifically come to me because they feel — and they even directly say this to me — that I would ‘get them’ a bit better,” Hoang says.

“So they do open up, and they do come [to the counselling sessions] because they feel I can relate to their culture.”

Lin says for some of her clients, talking about sex and intimacy can feel like speaking a foreign language.

“Talking about sex [and using that] vocabulary, it can be like an alien or foreign language when you speak about your genital parts or even your intimacy,” she says.

She also notices that many of her Asian Australian clients are unfamiliar with how therapy works. Sometimes she says they expect her to act more like a GP who can prescribe them medication or expect an immediate result after the therapy.

A woman in a black outfit is standing next to a woman in a white outfit on a jetty.

Hailey Lin (left) says while her mother (right) has been supportive of her career, she rarely mentions her work to their relatives. Source: Supplied / Hailey Lin

In Hoang’s practice, traditional values around family loyalty are a recurring topic in his conversations with Chinese clients.

“[I think] because a lot of us are migrants and come from various places that there is intergenerational trauma that’s probably a little bit more frequent than other different kinds of backgrounds,” he says.

Tackling shame and lack of education

While some Australians may hold the impression that Chinese people tend to be conservative when it comes to intimacy, Lin says it’s not the case.

“There’s a misconception that only Asian or Chinese people find [conversations about sex] challenging,” she says.

The fact is, even for Western people, they still find it challenging too, because it’s against the mainstream culture.

But for Chinese Australians, there are some cultural barriers that make it harder for them to have candid discussions about sex.

Lin says the lack of comprehensive sex education in schools in many Asian countries is one of the key factors.

“They just talk about biological stuff, but they don’t tell you how to give consent to help your first sexual experience, or they don’t talk about pleasure,” she says.

A woman in academic regalia poses in front of an old building.

After working as a social worker and sex educator in Hong Kong, Hailey Lin moved to Sydney to pursue two postgraduate degrees in sexual health and counselling. Source: Supplied / Hailey Lin

Even in cases where conversation is encouraged by parents or educators, Lin says many still focus on abstinence, saying things like, “‘don’t do this’, ‘don’t fall in pregnancy’, ‘protect yourself’, ‘use a condom'”.

“But sex is something we need to learn, we need to build up; a skill we need to practice,” she says.

Hoang says shame is a key barrier that many Chinese people encounter when talking about sex.

Shame is a weapon that’s often used in Asian culture.

“Shame is a feeling that we get when we’re kind of telling ourselves that we are a bad person,” Hoang says.

“And the following action [typical for] shame is to hide, to withdraw, because you are such a bad person that you don’t want other people to be around you and see you for the ‘badness’ that you are.”

Demystifying sex for the community

As two of the very few sex and relationship psychotherapists with Chinese heritage who offer services in Australia, Lin and Hoang know they bear an extra responsibility in helping to educate their community about sex.

Hoang says besides stigma and stereotypes, there is also a prevailing myth that sex should “always be good”, especially with a committed partner, which can cause anxiety among some clients.

Instead, he encourages them to think about “seasons” when it comes to sex.

Hoang explains: “There are times when it’s summer and it’s hot and heavy, and there are other times when it’s winter and cold, and then there are other times when it’s spring or autumn when it’s kind of lukewarm.”

Above all, he stresses communication is the key to having a positive sex life and relationships.

“If you want more sex, just talk about it openly. It doesn’t have to be something serious,” he says.

A couple holds hands while riding skateboards on a street.

Ronald Hoang (left) says communication with intimate partners is key to having positive experiences of sex and relationships. Source: Supplied / Ronald Hoang

Lin agrees, saying it’s natural for intimate relationships to ebb and flow and advocates for the ‘good-enough sex model’ — a psychological concept based on balancing positive experiences of intimacy with realistic expectations.

“You will have frustration in your sex life, in your intimacy, but always it remains ‘good enough sex’.

“Sometimes we allow ourselves to have below-average sex, but sometimes also bring some novelty into our sex life, because this is human nature — we all like new stuff.”

With additional reporting by Bertin Huynh and Dennis Fang