The life of a Third Culture Kid therapist

A pondering on how much I enjoyed my week off - and how complicated it felt to enjoy it out loud!

This episode is born from seeing how many of us have a dual sense of being both incredibly interesting, and not entirely sure of who we are and what we are about. For many TCKs, the most interesting things about us happened to us, pre-memory - have been named and claimed as important parts of who we are, and define us. So much of this lands around where we were born, lived, and what nationalities or citizenships or languages we've acquired. But I'm seeing how little of this can feel about us.

This title feels like an odd one - after all, aren't TCKs supposed to be good at difference? As with so much, yes, and... Yes, we can be amazing at working with diverse experiences and viewpoints. Also, finding ourselves at odds with the people closest to us can feel deeply unsettling... In this episode I explore my experiences with this apparent paradox.

This episode topic was requested recently, and I'm so glad it was! I've been circling around talking about Third Culture Kids and Neurodivergence for a long time now, and it took a push to do it. It can be a challenging and vulnerable topic, but it's so important to explore both how often it seems to come up alongside TCK stories as well as how identifying neurodivergence can be complicated by that very same TCK story.

I recorded this while holding a lot of sadness - sadness for the pain in hear in so many TCK stories. In this episode I wonder about how much the stories of these sadnesses have to tell us about who we are - and my own experience of the hope this can bring.

In this episode, I wanted to reflect on how complicated it can be to work with safety. It's what so much wellness work is focused on - generating a bodily experience of safety, regulating our nervous system and reaching for calm and trust. But what do we do when we simply don't feel safe - and have good reason for that?