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Third Culture Kids and Character Development

Third Culture Kids and Character Development

The Third Culture Kids I work with often feel their characters to be as fragmented as their stories. Instead of a story arch that sees a character develop over time, our stories can feel broken up, with distinct versions of our main character showing up in their different chapters. We can feel stuck with a plethora of under-developed protagonists, a sense of amorphous character ‘shape’ and unclear about our story’s direction as a result.

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New Office, Old Me

New Office, Old Me

For so many of us growing up, Summer was the time of change – international moves aligned with school years and this transition season was marked by both endings and beginnings. It’s not unusual for a lot of Third Culture Kids to feel antsy this time of year, to feel the familiar itchy feet or ticking of that internal clock (whichever metaphor suits you best!) 

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I’m not traumatised… am I?

I’m not traumatised… am I?

I watched Gabor’s documentary on trauma, “The Wisdom of Trauma” (link below) last night. Late at night I found myself weeping at the combined relief and hope that his words and experience offer. Relief, because his approach validates my own approach to working with human pain, and hope because of the healing power of relationship that he demonstrates.

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Self Compassion and the Third Culture Kid

Self Compassion and the Third Culture Kid

I marvel at how often self compassion (or the lack of it!) comes up in my work with Third Culture Kids. I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, my own therapists point it out in me too. But it does seem a strange kind of paradox that TCKs, who we all talk about as tending towards high levels of empathy and compassion towards OTHERS (like articles here and here) struggle so much in SELF compassion. 

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Emerging after Coronavirus: anxiety, frustration and boundary work

But if you are struggling in this lockdown transition, you aren’t alone. You are in the company of many others, tip-toeing tentatively towards a world that feels quite demanding and overwhelming. You are not alone. Together we can sniff the air, pause and pay attention to our own pounding hearts, and then carefully negotiate our own small steps outside. Together. 

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Languages – those we’ve loved, and lost.

Language is one of our identity props, something I’ve written about before here, with Goffman as instigator of the concept. An identity prop is a “thing” – be that behavioural habit, physical object or personal characteristic, skill set or yes, language – that helps us communicate an identity more coherently. For example, if I am playing Hamlet on stage, at some point it’d help to have a skull to hand for the famous “Alas poor Yorick” scene that the play is known for. If I am trying to communicate that I’m “not from around here” and that I feel culturally French, it’d help if I had some identity props to hand to back up my claim. I need French books in my home, skills at French cuisine, some knowledge of France the country, and yes, some French language skills. After all, who grows up and spends part of their time in France and comes away without French?! Well, lots of us. 

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Happy Valentine’s Day – to YOU!!!

Our cultural experiences massively filter our feelings about this holiday – and every other one for that matter too. I’ve celebrated Valentine’s in one form or another every year of my teen/adult life – whether or not I was in a “couple” at the time. My first exposure to Valentine’s was via my high school community abroad – international school “American” culture (“American” because we were multicultural with a dominant American strand). So it was teachers giving out heart themed candy to all the class, female friends leaving origami love notes in lockers expressing appreciation for our friendship, and parents throwing co-ed Valentine’s parties with heart-shaped jello, pink Koolaid and cutsie cakes. 

And then England. And it’s not that. 

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A new year… a new TCK?

So a new year beckons, and as the saying goes: a new year, a new you. Trouble is, there are often so many ‘me’s for us Third Culture Kids already! Which one do I feel the need to ‘improve’ or ‘reinvent’? It can be giddy-making… And apparently we aren’t the only ones who think so – only one in four Brits made resolutions last new year.

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A thank you… from me to you.

It’s not uncommon for a therapist to be on the receiving end of gratitude expressed by their clients. I think this time of year can invite a reflective mood and, perhaps especially in the context of this year, we are many of us noticing just how far we’ve been challenged towards healthy change. Noticing our own journey can prompt many feelings – frustration, pain, sadness, compassion, hope, pride… and gratitude to those who have journeyed with us along the way. I’ve been really moved by some of the expressions of thanks I’ve received over the last few days and weeks especially, yet feel consistently inadequate in my own response. You see, I’m grateful to you. 

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It’s the most wonderful time of the year… so I shouldn’t feel so stressed!

Again and again over the last few weeks I have heard this refrain, “It’s Christmas, the holidays… and I’m so stressed! But I shouldn’t be!” I have come to believe, over the years and with increasing intensity, that if we are feeling a feeling – any feeling – we aren’t just doing it for kicks. If we feel ourselves to be happy, we have reason for this. If sad, reason can be found for this too. And so it goes for stress. It follows that if you are feeling stressed, it’s because the situation that you find yourself in is stressful. The trouble is that we have a tendency to believe some situations qualify as stressful, while others don’t. We preemptively determine where we expect to find our feelings. When they turn up unexpectedly, we decided them to be out of place.

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