Confucianism, Culture and the Emotional Worlds of Asian Australians
- Helen Su
- Aug 21, 2025
- 10 min read
For Why Race and Culture Matters in Australia, see here.
To read about Core Emotional Needs in the Asian Australian Context, here's the link.
Introduction
When we talk about Asian Australian mental health, we often focus on migration, racism, and intergenerational trauma. These are important layers but they are not the whole story. Beneath them lies a quieter, older influence that shapes how many (East) Asian Australians understand emotion, identity, obligation, and wellbeing: Confucianism.
Even for families who do not consciously identify as “Confucian,” the values shaped by Confucian philosophy have influenced East Asian societies and its diaspora for more than two thousand years. These values are embedded in language, family structure, education, and social expectations. They shape how people relate to one another, how they interpret distress, and how they seek help. And they often sit in tension with the Western psychological frameworks that dominate mental health care in Australia.
Recent research finds that that Confucianism provides a distinct mental health framework, one that differs fundamentally from Western models. Scholars have identified three major Confucian‑based mental health models - (a) individual‑centred, (b) social‑centred, and (c) state‑centred, each grounded in Confucian emotional, ethical, or political theory (Wang, 2024). Another study highlights the Confucian concept of Harmony as a foundational psychological principle that has shaped temperament, mental state, cognitive style, and moral character across East Asian societies (Li & Cui, 2022). Research on Confucian family values also shows that while these values often promote resilience, they can contribute to burnout, delayed help‑seeking, and increased suffering when duty overrides personal wellbeing (Badanta et al., 2022).
Understanding this philosophical foundation is essential for clinicians, educators, and anyone working with culturally diverse communities. This is not about stereotyping. It is about recognising the cultural logic behind emotional patterns that diverges from traditional Eurocentric mental health frameworks. It is about understanding the emotional grammar that many Asian Australians grew up speaking (or showing), often without realising it had a name.
Confucianism as an Emotional Blueprint
Confucianism is not a religion in the Western sense. It is a moral and relational philosophy built on the belief that harmony within the self, the family, and society is the foundation of a good life. It teaches that people become fully human through relationships, and that emotional maturity is expressed through self‑cultivation, restraint, and responsibility.
Research shows that Confucianism has shaped temperament, mental state, cognitive style, and moral character across East Asian societies (Li & Cui, 2022). These influences are not abstract. The more I reconnected with my own roots, the more I noticed how they show up in the therapy room every day in my work with clients of Asian heritage.
I see this a lot in clients who grew up in Australia, often absorbing Western norms around autonomy, boundaries, and emotional expression. They often feel that the emotional grammar of their family no longer fits the world they inhabit. This mismatch can create a sense of internal separation, where parts of the self feel split between cultural expectations.
Hierarchy and the Five Cardinal Relationships
Confucianism teaches that society is held together by five key relationships: parent–child, ruler–subject, husband–wife, elder–younger, and friend–friend. Each relationship carries expectations around duty, loyalty, respect, protection and moral behaviour.
Safety is found in fulfilling one’s role, not in emotional expressiveness. A parent may show love through sacrifice, provision, or discipline rather than through verbal affection. A child may demonstrate care through obedience or academic effort rather than through open emotional sharing.
When children grow up in Eurocentric society that positively encourages questioning, negotiation, and individual preference, these role‑based expectations can feel rigid or even suffocating. Parents may interpret their child’s growing autonomy as disrespect. Children may interpret parental authority as control. This is often the beginning of acculturative family distancing, not because love is absent, but because the emotional languages spoken at home and outside diverge.
Taking great care to not characterise parents' emotional restraint as emotional distance and thinking about it as a form of relational integrity, clinicians could help clients find ways of maintaining harmony and honouring one’s place in the family.
Emotional Moderation: Why Restraint Is Not Avoidance
Confucianism views emotions as something to be cultivated, not simply expressed. Emotional restraint is seen as a sign of maturity and moral character. The goal is not to suppress emotion, but to wield, regulate and harness it in ways that protect relationships, much like Mulan.
This aligns with research showing that Confucian emotional theory emphasises balance, moderation, and harmony as core components of psychological wellbeing (Li & Cui, 2022).
This could mean:
Anger becomes dangerous because it disrupts harmony.
Sadness is made private because it burdens others.
Joy is moderated to avoid appearing boastful.
Vulnerability is shared selectively and relationally.
For many clients of Asian heritage, emotional inhibition is not a schema. Emotional moderation or restraint can be seen as a virtue. It reflects a belief that emotions should be managed in ways that preserve connection rather than destabilise or break it. This helps explain why somatisation is common in Asian populations: the body becomes a culturally acceptable place for distress to speak.
Hua Zhou in his emotional restraint when called upon to serve the Imperial Army knowing that he will perish, chose only to share vulnerability with his spouse. Mulan as we know it, takes things to a different level by physically standing in for her father as the ultimate expression of love.
In Australia where emotional openness is often equated with authenticity, Asian Australians may feel conflicted. They may be told they are 'closed off', 'hard to read', or in my case 'too quiet' in the classroom, work meetings, gatherings or generally being a poor interviewee and making myself and accomplishments known.
This mismatch can lead to marginalisation perhaps not in the social sense but internally. Clients may begin to doubt their own emotional instincts, feeling caught between cultural expectations that value restraint and a broader Australian society that values and rewards expressiveness.
Interdependence: The Relational Self
Confucianism emphasises the interdependent self - a self defined through relationships, obligations, and social roles. Identity is not “I think, therefore I am.” Rather, it is “I am because of who I am to others.” This shapes many facets of life including decision-making, career choices, conflict resolution, self-esteem, shame and pride, boundaries and obligations and sense of belonging.
Research shows that Confucian ethical theory positions relational harmony as a central psychological goal, influencing how individuals understand wellbeing and distress (Wang, 2024).
For many Asian Australians, autonomy is not about separation. It is about acting with integrity while staying connected. Western models that equate individuation with psychological health can inadvertently pathologise interdependence, which is a cultural strength. The need to individuate imposed on Eastern family structures can cause confusion and harm and perpetuate feelings of guilt and shame.
I often observed these differences where separating from what is defined as a 'toxic relationship' pains Asian Australian clients as emotionally as their western counterparts with the added element of existential pain. It represents losing a part of their identities that were co-constructed with that 'toxic element/influence and can be described as "betraying who you're supposed to be".
As clinicians, this is a moment to pause and reconsider how we conceptualise autonomy, boundaries, and rupture. When we apply Western individuation models without cultural context, we risk misinterpreting existential pain as pathology rather than recognising it as a culturally-coherent response.
For fellow therapists, this is also an invitation to approach these moments by providing cultural recognition and safety. When a client feels that leaving a harmful relationship means betraying who they are, our role is not to push them toward Western notions of autonomy, but to help them navigate the cultural, relational, and existential layers with compassion and nuance.
Effort, Virtue, and the Moral Meaning of Hard Work
Confucianism places enormous value on effort as a moral act. Hard work is not just a path to success, it is a reflection of character.
Two types of effort beliefs are common in East Asian cultures:
Obligation‑oriented effort: working hard because it is the right thing to do.
Improvement‑oriented effort: working hard to grow and honour one’s role.
This explains why many Asian Australians struggle with:
rest without guilt
play without productivity
pleasure without justification
Spontaneity can feel irresponsible. Joy can feel indulgent and rest can feel like a betrayal of one’s obligations. Research confirms that Confucian values can promote resilience and prosocial behaviour, but can also contribute to burnout, delayed help‑seeking, and increased suffering when duty overrides personal wellbeing (Badanta et al., 2022).
In doing work with my own therapist, this was an area where my inner critic needed most convincing. It took years to accept that I deserved the same therapeutic help I offer my clients and even more years to enter therapy. Once in, I needed to negotiate a new framework where my Healthy Adult is happy to work hard in the traditional sense and also work hard at personal wellbeing so that I can further fulfil my duty to others. In Australia and in our profession, self-care is valorised, clients may feel ashamed for not being able to slow down or guilty for wanting to. This tension can deepen feelings of internal marginalisation where one's inherited cultural values feel out of place in the broader society.
As they say, I learnt to simply put on my lifejacket before putting it on others. This is still a work-in-progress that sits more comfortably now than ever before.
Boundaries, Ritual, and the Golden Mean
Confucianism emphasises ritual propriety (礼 li) and moderation (中庸 zhong yong). These principles guide behaviour in ways that Western psychology does not adequately account for in some Asian cultural contexts.
For example:
Boundaries are relational, not individual.
Limits are negotiated through context, not explicit statements.
Self‑control is a moral virtue, not a coping strategy.
Harmony is prioritised over personal preference.
This is why direct confrontation or even communication can feel disrespectful, and why many Asian clients prefer or grew up with subtle, indirect ways of communicating needs. This style of communication also requires practice and in its absence, avoidance often fills the gap.
I remember moments of tension as a child where I had corrected, with helpful intention, the spelling of a word on a classroom blackboard. A subtle and culturally-resonant way to approach this would have been to inform my teacher such that they could make the correction themselves. Preserving dignity, allowing them to "save face", would have been seen as both a virtue and a duty on my part.
In Australia where directness is encouraged, children who are seen to push against these norms are labelled 'rebellious' by their parents and likewise, children may experience parental expectations as overcontrol. This dynamic often fuels acculturative family distancing, where emotional closeness erodes not because love is absent but because the rules of engagement have changed.
For clinicians, this is an invitation to honour face‑saving practices and subtlety as part of culturally-safe communication. When we attune to indirectness as a relational strategy rather than avoidance, we create space for trust and dignity in the therapeutic relationship.
Confucianism and Schema Formation
Confucian values can shape schema development in predictable ways:
Filial piety -> Self‑Sacrifice, Subjugation
Emotional restraint -> Emotional Inhibition
High expectations -> Unrelenting Standards
Harmony and hierarchy -> Conflict avoidance
Conditional worth -> Defectiveness/Shame
These patterns may not be signs of high dysfunction. By not understanding that they could be culturally-shaped adaptations especially in second generation Asian Australians, they may become problematic when they collide with Western expectations or when they are rigidly applied in contexts where they no longer serve the individual. I discuss this further in another blog - Schemas in (Asian) Cultural Context.
Why This Matters for Clinicians
Understanding Confucianism or any other cultural, ethnic, religious philosophies is not about memorising its facts. It is about recognising the emotional logic behind behaviours that Western psychology may misinterpret as dysfunction.
When clinicians understand client difficulties within their own context, we can:
reduce misdiagnosis
avoid pathologising cultural strengths
build trust more quickly
tailor interventions to cultural context
support clients in navigating bicultural/racial identity
honour interdependence while fostering flexibility
Cultural humility and safety, not cultural mastery/competence is the goal here.
A Call to Action for Fellow Therapists
If you are a therapist who has felt unsure, hesitant, or unprepared to work with clients from Confucian‑heritage or Asian backgrounds, consider this an invitation, not a criticism.
Confucianism continues to shape the emotional lives of Asian Australians in ways that are often subtle, inherited, and deeply embodied. These values of harmony, duty, restraint, interdependence are not barriers to mental health. They are cultural legacies that make sense within their own philosophical and historical context. When we understand them, we gain a richer, more compassionate lens for formulation and care.
As clinicians, our task is not to “correct” these values or impose our own, but to recognise how they function, where they protect, and where they constrain. When we meet clients at the intersection of culture, migration, and identity, we honour the full complexity of their emotional world.
You do not need to be an expert in Confucian philosophy to offer culturally safe care. You do not need perfect language, perfect knowledge, or perfect confidence. What we need is curiosity, humility, and a willingness to learn alongside our clients.
In my journey of realising the same, my internal conflicts between East and West have gradually melded together in a balanced and harmonious way that speaks to myself and my loved ones. Like yin yang 陰陽 that continue to flow and influence each other, we keep growing and shifting, clashing at times but continuously moving towards each other in a dynamic balance.
Start by asking gentle questions. Notice where assumptions from traditional psychology/mental health models might be shaping your interpretations. Hold space for relational forms of identity, emotional restraint, and duty‑based love. Let clients teach you the emotional grammar of their world.
When we approach this work with openness rather than certainty, we create room for deeper trust, more accurate understanding, and more meaningful healing. And in doing so, we expand not only our clinical skill, but our humanity.
This is the work our multicultural future asks of us and we are capable of rising to it together.
See you soon,
Helen
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"When I walk along with two others, from at least one I will be able to learn"
"三人行，必有我師焉"
Confucius
References
Wang, K. (2024). The theory and practice of Chinese Confucian mental health education. In H. S. Mofic et al. (Eds.), Eastern religions, spirituality, and psychiatry. (pp. 211-219). Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
Li, Y., & Cui, H. (2022). On the value of the Chinese pre‑Qin Confucian thought of “Harmony” for modern public mental health. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 870828. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.870828
Badanta, B., González‑Cano‑Caballero, M., Suárez‑Reina, P., Lucchetti, G., & de Diego‑Cordero, R. (2022). How does Confucianism influence health behaviors, health outcomes and medical decisions? Journal of Religion and Health, 61, 2579-2725.
