TURNING THE TIDE

In psychologist Zhang Chun's consult ing room in Xiamen, Fujian province, she has witnessed the struggles of women, their awakening in society and their changing attitudes to traditional family roles.

In more than 3,000 hours of consulting hundreds of women, she finds they share a similar dilemma which she labels the "double bind". It is a psychological predicament, in which a person receives from a single source conflicting messages that allow no appropriate response to be made.

"Under this logic, women should be pretty, but not too pretty; women should be independent, but not too independent. It's like women are trapped in a paradox," Zhang, 41, says.

What's worse, in her observation, is that many women are unaware of the situational biases at play and get used to the inequities.

Research figures echo her observation. According to the World Health Organization, about 264 million people around the world have depression, and more women are affected than men. A report led by Huang Yueqin, director of the Division of Social Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine at Peking University's Institute of Mental Health, which was published in The Lancet Psychiatry in 2019, indicates that, in China, about 65 percent of people with mental disorders are female.

"Besides reasons caused by biology, I think the answer is simply that women live under more stress than men," Zhang concludes.

"More than 90 percent of my clients are women of different ages and from different backgrounds. Of them, some are married, while some are not; some are conservative, while some are open-minded; some are aggressive, while some are passive. From what they all tell me, I seem to figure out a similar story, which I describe as 'depression in women'," the psychologist says.

Although its symptoms don't necessarily fit the diagnostic criteria for major depression, it is a depressive feeling that many women are facing, and they need help and support, rather than diagnosis.

It is also her story. After graduating from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, Zhang tried various jobs. In 2010, she opened a small ice cream shop in Xiamen called Qingtian Jian, which meant it only opened on sunny days. In her friends' eyes, she is a good storyteller and healer.

Her story took an unexpected turn in April 2013, when she was diagnosed with depression. Two months later, her doctor suggested she receive hospital treatment, but she rejected it for "being afraid of going mad". Alongside taking various antidepressants and seeing psychologists, Zhang started to write about her days living with depression.

This became a book — 1,003 Days in Another Universe, published in 2018 — sharing her story with people facing a similar situation.

"Feeling exhausted and broken, physically and mentally, I cannot speak a word these days, but always wake up screaming with night terrors," Zhang writes.

At her nadir, she could not eat, or even get out of bed.

"At that time, every day I thought of death and planned how and when to commit suicide. I knew I had many reasons to live, but I also had strong desire to die, which made me extremely tired," Zhang says.

"Negative feelings or things, like death, are often hidden from discussion, which is a taboo that we should break. Being open to breaking it can make you treasure life more," she adds.

After taking numerous psychology courses and gradually recovering, Zhang became a psychologist in 2020.

Looking back, Zhang finds that it is the existential anxiety that lies behind her own story, and those of most of her clients, which make them doubt their purpose in the world and question their existence.

In China, as in many traditional societies, the social pressure to conform starts when a girl is born. Inheriting their father's surname, daughters are often treated as wairen, people outside their families, as they are to marry and leave their parents' family afterward. There is an old saying that goes: "A married daughter is like water spilled away."

"Before I went to college in Beijing, a neighbor told me that after I left home, I would no longer belong to my family, because I would get married after graduation. Although I did not find anything wrong with it, I knew that I did not have a home from that moment," Zhang says.

"It is terrible that you are unconsciously trapped in such a concept so deeply embedded in our culture. Compared to gender discrimination in the workplace or intimate relationships, this kind of unconscious attitude is what really scares me. I was born as a woman, but on many occasions, my existence is not recognized or accepted," she says.

Such existential anxiety influences many women, and at different stages in life. One of her clients, about 70 years old, says that, in the past, she had a husband to serve. Later, she had to work and raise their child and, now, with her husband having passed away and her child living independently, she is on her own, which means she can finally do whatever she wants. But here comes the dilemma — she doesn't know what to do. In Zhang's analysis, the reason behind it is that the woman sees herself as unnecessary; as someone who hasn't done anything meaningful in her life.

"This is the pain that most of my mother's generation face," Zhang says, adding that they are always ready to sacrifice their own careers or lives for their families. Zhang's mother, for example, gave up the opportunity for a promotion at work, "because the children need her to take care of them".

In recent decades, the rise of feminine consciousness has awakened in women in China the desire to take a different path from their mothers and grandmothers.

Instead of taking on the traditional gender roles, like wife and mother, Zhang, like many of her peers, remains childless.

"There are women at 18 or 19 who come to me talking about the distress caused by gender bias. At college they want to be leaders and take the major that is dominated by men," Zhang says.

She admits that she is a woman who has unconsciously conformed to such gender stereotypes, but she is now aware of that and tries to think outside the box.

In the past 30 years or so, Zhang says, she has never sat on a couch that makes her comfortable, because they are always too deep for her body frame. "I had always blamed myself for being uncomfortable, but now I know it is not my fault, it is the couch," Zhang explains.

In her opinion, it is not only the design of the couch that needs to be changed, but also the world around it. Female voices need to be amplified to let more women know they have a choice, and to speak out about it.

Zhang is glad to see that, increasingly, young women are taking things a step further than her, and the psychologist tells every person she consults, no matter whether they're female or male, that it is their right to be happy.

As Simone de Beauvoir, the French existentialist writer, said, one is not born a woman, but becomes one. For Zhang, it took her decades to even begin understanding that sentence, and when the self-awareness begins, nothing can hold it back.