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The life of a Third Culture Kid therapist
88 Do I Need or Do I Want?
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Rachel explores how many TCKs have learnt to minimize needs, to such an extent that the things we need to thrive start to feel like luxuries we shouldn't want. She offers another way in to discovering what our needs may be and how to acknowledge them.
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122 - Editing the Story
20:25In this episode, I'm pondering associations between changes and endings. In my story recently, I realised my needs had changed and the impact this was having around my book club involvement. I quickly assumed that acknowledging this change would initiate an ending, a quitting and loss around community. But what if changes could be integrated into a new chapter? A story edited rather than lost?121 - Acclimatised to Discomfort
16:44What are the implications of a life lived in adaptation? One of them seems to be a familiarity with discomfort! This can impact different TCKs different ways - some of us get super sensitive to challenge, over-saturated as we have been in early chapters. Some of us identify so much with challenge that we continue to seek it out in our adult lives. Either reaction may be working with an acclimatisation with discomfort. We can become so attuned to discomfort as our baseline that we normalise it - either in ways that keep us in it, avoidant or unclear about what changes we could make to improve our experience, or in ways that avoid comfort by seeking growth to exhausting degrees. Either way, what happens when we get acclimatised to discomfort?120 - Coming Home
17:15Today I'm reflecting on coming home. As TCKs, we can often develop sensitivities and strategies for managing the leaving experiences of our lives, but I'm noticing an area I want to work on - returning. I know leaving, do I know how to return? Turns out I didn't handle my most recent return brilliantly, so this episode is walking through that experience with you!119 - TCKs and Selfies
16:37So I messed up the timing of this one! Got all organised, and recorded before going away last week on holiday - then never scheduled it to post! So it's going out this week instead :) In this episode I ponder something that comes up a lot - with TCKs and in general discourse - the Selfie! I'm always fascinated when we have a resistance against something, and I wanted to explore this as something that I think is an untapped resource in our work around belonging. Here I explore how the simple selfie can be another tool for us to use to land our Selves in context, witness to our moments of connection and ground us. I'd love to know your thoughts!118 - Different Modes of Me
18:00After some creative scribbling, I feel like I've cracked something I want to now share with you - how I've seen myself privilege one version of my identity over others! This is something I hear us especially prone to doing if managing fluctuating energy levels, sometimes due to chronic conditions or illnesses. As TCKs, the pressure is often on to demonstrate our 'added value' and I share here the different contributions that my 'different modes of me' make.117 - TCKs and Aging
17:45What do our TCK stories tell us about aging? And how does this impact our identities? This episode throws open this question and explores how we can use our stories as a resource to help us understand where our own (perhaps multiple) constructs of aging come from, and how we can navigate this with mindfulness and gentleness.116 - Initiating Change Protocol
17:34This last week I hit a familiar feeling - low motivation, a sense of 'what's the point anyway?' and general resistance to the elements and rhythms of my daily life. As with all of my confusing feelings, I tried to look at the context around it - and realised I was coming up to my three year mark: It's nearly three years I've been in this new house and my TCK clock was getting ready to lose it.115- Birthday Ponderings
21:27So birthdays can bring up a lot for people, and for TCKs, these were often affected by mobility: Who do you invite to a party when you are the new kid? How do people celebrate here? And mine tends to make me pensive around identity also - who have I been this year, and where am I at now? And so in this podcast, I invite you to ponder with me those identities we inhabit but especially those we might stop short of claiming, because we "can't do them properly" or may feel we don't have time to establish.114 - The Secret of Happiness
14:26I've just read Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist" and now I know the secret of happiness... and it's reminiscent of what I see Third Culture Kids doing every day in the tension they work to hold - between the "here" in my hand and the "there" out in the world.