Much work has gone into unpacking the range of individual, interpersonal and structural barriers that prevent asylum-seekers from accessing healthcare. In this Brief Communication, we disentangle asylum-seeking families' psychosocial responses when accessing healthcare as crucial dimensions of the access experience. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 11 asylum-seeking families in Denmark, we present examples from three specific healthcare encounters between families and healthcare professionals in the Danish asylum system. We demonstrate how unfamiliarity with the healthcare system, interpersonal miscommunication and cultural insensitivity among professionals evoke specific emotions that undermine participants' trust in the healthcare system and affect their future motivation for healthcare seeking and ultimately also their healthcare seeking behavior. We argue for an urgent need to recognize the pivotal role of such psychosocial responses in shaping healthcare access for asylum-seeking families. Focusing on these responses is an important next step in overcoming barriers in access to healthcare, which have been described in literature for years.