Baek Sehee’s I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki is written in a therapy-session format that reads almost like a script. That structure matters. For a lot of people, clients and counselors included, it offers a realistic look at what therapy can actually sound like, messy, repetitive, sometimes awkward, and still meaningful. It also captures something I think counselors see constantly but don’t always name well, what it looks like when distress is real and persistent, but the person is still “functional.” Showing up to work, keeping commitments, even laughing at times… while privately wondering if they’re allowed to feel as bad as they do.

From a multicultural counseling perspective, this book is useful because it shows how culture can shape the presentation of distress, not in a “Korea is like this” stereotype way, but in a cross-cultural way counselors will recognize. Many clients communicate distress indirectly. They minimize, intellectualize, or describe it through their body first. Fatigue, brain fog, shut-down, avoidance, rumination, burnout. The feelings are there, but the language for them is complicated, or it doesn’t feel safe to use.

A few patterns show up repeatedly in a way that feels familiar to real therapy work

• Self-criticism and minimization: the inner voice that says “I’m being dramatic” or “other people have it worse,” even while suffering.

• Ambivalence toward help: wanting relief but also feeling embarrassed to need it.

• Somatic + cognitive distress: exhaustion, heaviness, stress that sits in the body, and mental spirals that don’t shut off.

• “I’m fine but I’m not fine”: the mismatch between outward functioning and internal collapse.

• Therapy as pacing, not a breakthrough: progress looks more like small re-frames and gradual insight than a single moment of clarity.

These themes are valuable to counselors because they highlight how a client’s narrative can sound “less severe” than what they are actually experiencing. A counselor who only listens for dramatic symptoms might miss the seriousness in the pattern.

This book is a good reminder that not every client will walk into therapy ready to name feelings directly or tell a clean, linear story. If a counselor assumes a Western default, quick emotional disclosure, direct confrontation, rapid insight, “say exactly what you feel”, they may misread the client as resistant, avoidant, or unmotivated. In reality, the client may be navigating cultural expectations around emotional restraint, saving face, achievement pressure, or stigma about needing help. Even if the client doesn’t explicitly name culture, the shape of their distress may still be culturally patterned.

This is where (Zhou et al. 2015) helps frame what the book captures. Their study extends a structural model of somatization to South Koreans and argues that depressive symptoms can be shaped by culturally influenced “scripts” for distress—both in how distress is experienced and how it is expressed. Practically, this means somatic emphasis (fatigue, bodily stress, shutdown) shouldn’t automatically be interpreted as “not emotional” or “not depression.” It may be the client’s most accessible way to communicate pain, especially when direct emotional disclosure feels unfamiliar or unsafe.

• It shows what therapy actually sounds like. Not polished. Not inspirational every page. More realistic than most media depictions.

• It normalizes functional distress. The client is not falling apart publicly, but she is clearly struggling.

• It supports cultural humility indirectly. The book invites counselors to listen for what isn’t being said, not just what is.

• It highlights the role of stigma. The client’s relationship to “needing help” is part of the story, not a side note.

This is not a textbook, and it shouldn’t be treated like one. A few limitations matter if counselors use it as a resource

• Therapy is shown through one lens. It’s a specific client and therapist dynamic, and readers could overgeneralize from it.

• Cultural context is not always explicit. Counselors may need to supply the multicultural interpretation rather than expecting the book to teach it directly.

• Risk of romanticizing distress. The title and tone could be misread as aestheticizing suffering rather than naming it as serious.

If I were translating this book into practice takeaways, I’d focus on how to validate distress without forcing a client into a narrow emotional script

• Culturally-based open-ended questions

  • “When stress shows up, where do you notice it in your body first?”

  • “In your family or community, how did people talk about mental health or not talk about it?”

  • “What feels risky about naming this as depression/anxiety/burnout?”

• Gentle reframe

  • “You’re functioning, but it sounds like it costs you a lot to function. That still counts.”

• Normalize help-seeking without minimizing

  • “Needing support doesn’t mean it’s ‘that bad’ or ‘not that bad.’ It just means you’re human and you’re carrying a lot.”

Overall, I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki works best as a reflective resource, a reminder to listen carefully for cultural context, stigma, and somatic language, especially when the client appears outwardly “fine.”