The life of a Third Culture Kid therapist

This week, I'm observing my behaviour around my garden - how I seem to get lost in how to keep showing up to it after the big push of landscaping... and how this is mirrored in many ways as I navigate settledness as a TCK. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is a bit of processing moment today! I'm reflecting on those familiar sticking places we come back to - the same sinking feelings - and how we can disrupt the cycle by finding and naming the beliefs about ourselves that underpin them. And then change our stories - fundamentally! Walk with me as I ponder! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today I'm reflecting on how hard it can feel to tell our story in a way that fully reflects our experiences, and the pain of seeing our attempts to share misunderstood. These reflections took me to Rousseau's 'Surprised' piece - where he depicts a tiger in a jungle, frightened in a storm. There is a connection, I promise! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, I'm reflecting on my week off recently... and on how hard I'm finding it to tell the story outside of the familiar 'learning and growing' genre, and to instead sit with a new story - where it was straightforwardly and uncomplicatedly good. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode tracks a little conversation with the biggest welcome - to Lindsay Linder, Life Story's Communications Associate! Lindsay has been working with me for a number of years now, but thanks to a recent grant, is now coming on board to help me even more - listen for more details! Also do check out my new 'My Team' page for more of her story - https://explorelifestory.com/my-team/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I am so excited to introduce to you my new team member - associate coach, Mary Talbot! Here is a short episode of us in conversation around her story, and what she's bringing to Life Story Therapies! Do check out the 'My Team' page on the website for more information! My Team | Life Story Therapies Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So many TCKs I meet are deeply invested in social justice issues. Here I explore why this happens, what this involvement contributes to our stories, and how we can navigate identity throughout.And for those interested! https://toilettwinning.org/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An encounter with a harpist, and the joy of being in the audience. In this episode I reflect on the narrative so many Third Culture Kids encounter around their duty to lead.And for those interested - https://www.eiralynnjones.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Here I explore that tension I see myself and so many other TCKs carry in our stories - a sense of needing to figure out how to do life 'right'. I connect this to the necessity in childhood for many of us to figure out the correct way of being for the current cultural context. The urgency that surrounds this can often inhibit our ability to give ourselves goodness... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's common for Third Culture Kids to ask themselves, 'Who am I?' With Life Story Therapies we look to our stories to inform the answer to this - but these same stories can also help us but showing us who we didn't get to be. There will have been chapters for us where options were limited, as well as opportunities opened, and in this episode I explore how looking at who I didn't get to be can offer expansiveness to our sense of self, if we have a desire to explore it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Typically, Third Culture Kids carry grief triggered by the changes experienced in their early years. Here, I'm exploring how changes we may be working to choose in later life may actually need us to do grieving first. Grief reminds us of our story, why the things we find hard are hard, and makes space for us to change the next chapters. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode finds me struggling to articulate a sensation I've both felt personally and witnessed in my work with TCKs - a feeling that it's hard to truly trust the love of others as being about us. When we have spent a lifetime working to be useful or likeable by different cultural prisms, it can be hard to let love land as an experience we get to fully participate in, rather than simply work to generate. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm getting reflective this week in anticipation of my birthday - and pondering especially what it means to acknowledge the degree to which I feel safe and well in this, my 41st year. As I reflect on my TCK story so far, I have been collecting those memories - or reasons - I can honour as part of what has got me here so far, and wonder why 'safe' can be such a complicated word. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Third Culture Kids and decisions - it's a topic that comes up a lot and here I work with the distinction between a decision deciding the kind of person we are versus knowing the kind of person we are making sense of our decisions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Authenticity has become a tense word for many Third Culture Kids. It seems to invite us to choose one way of being, one part of our selves to declare as our true self, and condemns us to a kind of consistency of being that can feel claustrophobic. In this episode I explore how we can work with our many selves, negotiating the internal mobility that we need to express them all in fluid freedom. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Inspired by a client recently, I've been pondering how we work with the edges of our maps - more precisely, what do we do when we step off the maps we've walked so far, and start exploring where known self and world are uncharted? After all, as they put it, "There be dragons"... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I talk a lot about how we can process our story so far to understand better the chapters we want to write next... but what happens when we can't write those chapters where we want to? Here I walk through a process I'd invite in these challenging circumstances. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dipping my toes into local civic processes this week - and exploring both my delight and curiosity in the 'local' given the TCK early exposure to 'global'. Join me as I ponder! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A meandering episode this week - where I reflect on how I tell the story of my week, and how my narrative echoes a hesitation I hear for a lot of TCK stories, and how hard it is to let the little things take up space. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Finishing up this mini-series on TCKs and Maslow with questions about what self-actualised actually looks like for us as TCKs? What does fulfilled and meeting our potential even look like? And I am, ironically and perhaps rather perfectly, recording this on a day where I don't feel at all 'my best self'. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode tackles the self-esteem tier of Maslow's Hierarchy of needs. I've spoken before about self-esteem and TCKs, but here I focus on the ways in which TCKs learn they are interesting... and are those things about us, or what's happened to us? And what difference does it even make? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do we feel about the phrase, 'pleased with myself'? Very often we consider this feeling only allowed after very defined achievements - when we have done/completed/perfected something. This episode explores how this works when we've grown up with a sense of truncated time, and not feeling able to identify as 'complete'. How can we celebrate participation, rather than perfection? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So many of us orient ourselves around the question, "Where do I belong?" In this episode I ponder what flipping the script could do for us - "Where do I want to belong?" Join me and, as always, I'd love to hear your feedback so send that through to [email protected] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Happy 2026! In this first episode of the new year, I'm pondering how the TCK experience interacts with 'new year, new me' energy! I'm also wondering how the 'old me' might feel about that... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This year I've been encountering a new awful question - not 'Where are you from?' but 'What are your Christmas traditions?' In this episode I get curious about what I find difficult about this question - how traditions can be hard when you've seen and experienced so many different versions of this season, and yet what cultivating habits around this season can do for us. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

And here we have the second instalment of our Maslow series... Safety Needs! What does safety and risk actually mean in our TCK stories? And how do we see these play out in our current chapters? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is an episode I've been pondering a while - how do TCKs perceive their own needs in terms of an internalised hierarchy? I explore where Maslow's ideas and my own observations around need-juggling and autonomy interact here - and specifically around our physiological needs. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode is pondering around how hard we work to create coherence, and my own experience this week of wanting to let incoherence be. TCKs often work so hard to prune and curate their stories, and I'm exploring here the relief I feel at not doing that today. Thanks for joining me! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if we actually listed out our expectations of ourselves? What if we really allowed ourselves to acknowledge the many and competing ideas of how we 'should' be, the ones we have collected through our cultures and places - and sat with how utterly impossible they all are to satisfy? And then let go and grieve... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I felt fear this week - fear jumping over time stamps, into my now. How do we explain feelings that show up out of space and time, dislocated within our own story? How do we understand fear when we are safe? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This weekend I went to a print fair - and found a piece of art that triggered an unexpected TCK encounter. What is it about images that can press on those tender parts of our story so well?Check out the artist at www.beicreative.co.uk or on Instagram @_beicreative Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I had some soft slow sadness hit this week - and it took me a while to identify it as loneliness. This episode explores where and why loneliness might be a familiar part of our TCK story. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So I've just been to a wedding - and broke a few of my own self-imposed rules. Here I talk about the moment of choice - to sit back and wait and watch before acting, the context necessary for the risk I took, and the after-effects of the choice I made. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, I observe the difficulty so many TCKs have with acknowledging their feelings - especially feelings of discomfort. Why is this, and what do these feelings have to contribute to our story? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So, I found this episode I recorded way back in July! Excited to finally bring it to you - meandering though how TCKs might navigate birthdays and other celebrations when belonging is so often tied into the shape of those modes of celebration and traditions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Back after a long summer gap - but reflecting on the processing there and on a theme showing up a lot this week - self-sabotage! This is an exploration of what are the stories we might be in when we watch ourselves deviate from our own goals and plans - TCK-style! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Reflections on how things actually going to plan - life doing what we wanted - can actually trigger anxiety in TCKs! Even finishing my to-do list... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Introducing a new online group for TCK creatives! If you are a TCK who loves working creatively, join us via Facebook (just search 'Third Culture Kid Creatives') and discover how many TCKs are exploring their stories creatively, using these creative outlets to process their experiences. The link to the group on Facebook is https://www.facebook.com/groups/1431710724484174/See you there! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Inspired by a conversation with another TCK, I've decided to make tangible representations of all those losses that have felt so hard to name - especially the loss of things that we never had - and invite you to do the same. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens with perfectionism collides with a short internal timeline? This episode I'm exploring the way in which our TCK experiences can shorten our sense of timeline, keeping our focus on achieving 'completion' even with those aspects of life that are just never going to be 'done'... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So in this episode I'm exploring the ways in which we absorb different cultural ideas about what kind of life is supposed to make us happy - aka, are we allowed to be happy with something outside of that? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A shorter one today - This is me just finding myself wanting to sit and be, so I thought I would do it with you - pondering what it is to be still in the midst of spinning between the different facets of self... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I've turned 40! So cue reflections on aging, the ways in which our cultures and places contribute to our perspective on age, and a poem. Thank you so much for being with me for so long, and I'm so grateful to have arrived here, with you. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Good at smoothing out social glitches? Feel desperately uncomfortable being 'demanding'? Welcome to the club! I hear so many of us struggling to tolerate the awkward... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I hear so many TCKs characterise themselves as 'control freaks'. Here I unpack what control might mean to us, given our TCK stories, and how our experience of control impacts our confidence around decision-making... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As TCKs we can spend a lot of time in other people's heads - looking at ourselves from their perspectives. What happens when we get back behind our own eyes? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's that time of year I get restless... actually, more like that time every four years... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode is born of frustration - and I know it's frustration I share with other Third Culture Kids. This is my meandering offering this week - a honest glimpse at the process of making choices from what can feel like an impossible spinning carousel - who will this choice make me, express and what kind of me 'should' I be in this moment? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So I missed talking to you all last week - because I was away on holiday! The most wonderful time, but also a good moment to reflect on themes that come up a lot for Third Culture Kids - travel, holidays, and coming home... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you struggle with feeling not-enough? Confused about which of your identities you are supposed to focus on and do 'properly'? We aren't alone - and I'm seeing these sensations show up for many of us. In this episode I explore the notion of growing up with identity archetypes, concentrated identities played out in short bursts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.