I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki

Sehee never names her psychiatrist, nor does she reveal their sex. She uses they/them pronouns and “the psychiatrist” to refer to them, both to preserve anonymity (Sehee never names anyone in her memoir) and to keep the focus on the therapeutic relationship rather than the psychiatrist’s identity. 

The psychiatrist is an understanding, empathetic listener who never passes judgment. Sehee struggles with shame, and the psychiatrist establishes a healthy working relationship with Sehee so that Sehee will feel more comfortable opening up about the exact nature of her depression and anxiety. This tactic is effective, and as their sessions progress, Sehee feels comfortable being increasingly vulnerable and open. The psychiatrist is also willing to meet Sehee where she is. During one of their initial sessions, the psychiatrist recommends starting “with something small” rather than taking drastic steps to alter troubled behavioral patterns (9). 

The psychiatrist diagnoses Sehee using a combination of talk therapy, questionnaires, and observation, and helps Sehee to establish and adjust a medication schedule to accompany their therapeutic sessions. During the sessions, the psychiatrist helps Sehee to better understand her mental health through listening and conversation, but also by remaining objective and pointing out places where Sehee is not yet able to understand and identify her own problem behaviors. This process ultimately becomes a model for Sehee: She becomes more self-reflective using the psychiatrist’s knowledge as a guide.

The psychiatrist’s exact pieces of advice are preserved because of the memoir’s format, but Sehee additionally gives the psychiatrist their own chapter towards the end of the memoir. The psychiatrist is as open as Sehee is during her moments of reflection, noting their initial discomfort with the idea of being recorded. During this chapter, the psychiatrist also reinforces much of what Sehee clarifies in the Prologue: That depression, anxiety, and treatment do not follow a linear path, but that progress is possible for everyone who has a mental health condition.

Sehee’s father was a violent man who often took his anger out on his wife and children. The psychiatrist helps Sehee to see that her father’s violence impacted her in multiple ways. Living in fear that she or her family members would anger their father and feel both the physical and emotional consequences of his wrath became the root cause of much of Sehee’s anxiety. Being treated so abusively by a parent charged with helping Sehee to develop healthy behaviors and patterns ultimately added to her low self-esteem and feelings of general unworthiness. She had never been enough in the eyes of her father, and this led to her feeling “not enough” in the eyes of other people. 

Sehee’s father’s abuse also shaped her in another key way: The family kept its abuse and dysfunction a closely guarded secret, and from that Sehee learned shame. She learned that her family was different from other, healthy families and that she had to keep this difference secret at all costs. This, in turn, led to further feelings of alienation and to Sehee developing the idea that her experiences were shameful and isolated. She becomes unable to realize that many people in the world share the same problems, and it is not until the psychiatrist explains that much of what she feels is “common” that she is able to let go of the unhealthy lessons she learned from her father in childhood.

Sehee initially reports “an abusive relationship” with her sister (5). Sehee’s father is abusive, often physically, and Sehee, her siblings, and her mother all become targets. In addition to the way that physical violence shaped Sehee’s childhood, she was additionally burdened by secrecy and shame. Her family was loath to admit their dysfunction or let the violent nature of their household become common knowledge, and Sehee’s older sister policed their family secrets to the same extent that their mother did. 

Sehee’s older sister was critical, judgmental, controlling, and manipulative. As she was older and earned her own money, she helped the family with their basic expenses. She used her role as provider as leverage, and Sehee recalls her older sister threatening to withhold basic supplies in order to elicit particular behaviors from Sehee. Their relationship, difficult as it is, does become an important catalyst in Sehee’s life. In order to break free from her sister, Sehee vows to become financially independent. She struggles with motivation as a result of her depression, but her sister’s verbal and emotional abuse helps her to earn her degree and find a suitable job. Later, however, Sehee and her sister reconcile. 

During her therapeutic process, Sehee learns that everyone is flawed and that her sister was also emotionally damaged by their abusive upbringing. The two find common ground, and eventually Sehee’s sister is no longer a source of difficulty or distress.

Sehee’s mother, like her sister, was initially a source of stress and unhappiness for Sehee. Trapped in an abusive marriage, her mother was often angry and negative when Sehee was a child. Sehee posits that she learned her low self-esteem, negative orientation towards the world, and difficulty experiencing joy from her mother. Even as an adult, she struggles in her relationship with her mother. 

Sehee does not feel that her mother supports or understands her and is particularly upset that her mother’s response to her depression is to tell her to “cheer up” and focus on the positive. What is ultimately so difficult about this particular piece of wisdom from her mother is that Sehee has rarely seen her mother put it into practice in her own life. She wonders whether, if her mother had tried to “cheer” herself up, she might have been able to understand how difficult and impractical that piece of advice is. 

Although they struggle to maintain a healthy and happy relationship, their fractured bond does become a lens through which Sehee can learn to better understand herself. By analyzing both her mother and the way her mother parented her children, Sehee learns the roots of many of her own troubled behavioral patterns and begins to develop alternate models.