The life of a Third Culture Kid therapist

To whom do we belong? How can we manage the sense of not belonging anywhere properly, and that sense of rejection from places we do feel kinship with? Here Rachel explores how we can soothe our internal hierarchies regarding the parts of ourselves, and use compassion to achieve integration.

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How do you feel when people leave? In this episode I share what I'm going through as friends are moving away, and my process as I deal with this... I hope it's helpful!

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How did growing up abroad impact our relationship with animals? And how significant are pets to our stories now?

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As I gaze at the new additions to my own mantlepiece, I reflect on why it's so hard for many of us to put up pictures of the people that matter to us.

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What is it that makes us flinch so from our own bodies? So many of us have complicated relationships with our bodies, and this is no less so as Third Culture Kids. We carry so many, often conflicting, body expectations that meeting our own gaze in the mirror can be painfully uncomfortable. I don't think it needs to be this way...

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Autumn has been a season that has prompted reflections around loss for many cultures. Here, Rachel reflects on how we can honour loss - through remembrance, harvest, preserving. We can light the darkness of our own grief by naming our losses, and loving the parts of us that loved them.

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In this episode I explore why I avoid gratitude journals and how I lean into joy in the self instead. This can feel so counter-intuitive but I believe it's crucial for those of us who feel guilt or shame about what we "should" feel grateful for. This is especially problematic regarding experiences in our lives that leave us with struggles and challenges. Privileging our experiences of joy can help reclaim gratitude in a way that is lighter and less heavy than when it is used to shut down our more nuanced life experiences.

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Moving between cultures leads us to collect multiple (and at times, conflicting) experiences of our own gender. For every culture we encounter, there are different "right" and "wrong" ways of doing gender and this can complicate our experiences of identity. But complication becomes enrichment when we can map these out and make sense of where we have learnt our own sense of gender identity. And when we make sense of ourselves, then we have power over our self expression and sense of belonging.

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I'm talking to you on a grumpy-no good-terrible day. And by taking a moment to understand why I'm feeling so rubbish, I can make more sense of my story. We so often stick with ways of measuring our okayness that worked when we were younger - for me this was achievement and lists. But what happens when what counts as achievement changes as often as the countries in which we live? How do we achieve okayness then? And get rid of the grump? Join me as I ponder my own way through...

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Do you find yourself confused by your reactions to change or to stability/sameness? Let's assume you make sense, and explore together where these responses might have come from in your story, and what we can do to soothe our reactions.

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