Navigating Identity as Adult Third Culture Kids (TCKs)

What are TCKs/TCAs?

It’s been said that when third-culture adults (TCAs, the aged rendition of the third-culture kid, or TCK) gather, someone inevitably brings up the last time someone asked where they were from. For us, being asked where you’re from comes with complicated emotions.

Those who identify as “third-culture”—or identify with the experiences if not the label—are those who have spent a significant portion of their developmental years living outside of the cultural context of their parents. The “third” culture the label typically refers to is the person’s individual cultural makeup that is a combination of their parents’/heritage culture and their host culture(s)—a complicated both-and-neither set of cultural identities. Some prefer less to see themselves as embodying a distinct third culture and more a collective of many cultures. 

These are people who often share common experiences of global mobility and cultural bridging. They may come from families that were immigrants, migrants, asylum seekers, business people, diplomats, missionaries, military personnel, internationals, academics, scientists, and more. Their experiences create a unique set of strengths and challenges that TCAs carry into adulthood, especially when it comes to their sense and location of self (identity) and their relationships and sense of community (belonging).

Who am I? Who am I allowed to be?

“Who am I?” is a question that for many is tied to the question: “So where are you from?” When you are from many places, when you have a place in many cultural stories, identity can get complicated. Growing up with an expansive set of embodied cultural experiences can lead to a sense of conflict or confusion between those cultures.

While some third-culture people find some resolution to the tension in identifying as “______ and _______ and _________”—often appealing to a mix of ancestry, upbringing, citizenship, early childhood environments, other caregivers—they may then interact with people who, at best, don’t comprehend and at worse exoticize or invalidate having a multifaceted cultural identity. They live within a kind of monoculturalism that can look like conversations where one is asked, “but which one are you really?” or are told “sure, so you’re really a _________” by people trying to simplify their identities.

It can also be experienced as rejection from cultural communities that you do identify with. This rejection can be due to the mix of cultural influences as well as the basis of language, race, ethnicity, and more. As a British-born child of Malaysian and Hong Kong Chinese parents who spent his first 20 years in England, Hong Kong, and Scotland, I grew up separated from Britishness due to being culturally Chinese and a person of color while also  ‘not Hong Kong Chinese’ enough due to British upbringing, lack of fluent Cantonese, and lack of local HK Chinese cultural context (shows, celebrities, music, idioms, jokes). The question was never just “who am I?” but also “who am I allowed to be?” by the cultures I cherish and that are part of me.

Fitting in

One study (Pollok & Reken, 2009) found that third-culture people find different ways of coping in adulthood, often cycling through them in different contexts, of which three main ones they identified are:

• The “chameleon,” adopting the identity, norms, and expectations of the place or situation they’re in

• The “screamer,” leaning into being intentional outliers in the face of the cultural expectations around them

• The “wallflower,” remaining as unseen as possible to avoid both adapting or standing out

It is important to see these as skills; they are ways TCKs learned to deal with a high amount of physical and cultural transition during their developmental years. They are strengths, especially for TCKs who had to adapt to their host contexts or face rejection and alienation.

Nonetheless, many TCKs/TCAs also have to grapple with the question of who they really are when they are not adapting to, pushing against, or withdrawing from the identity demands of the world around them. Consider this in addition to other ways they may already be adapting their presentation or identity in a space due to race, gender, sexuality, citizenship, neurodivergence (masking), and more.

What can therapy with TCKs/TCAs achieve?

When TCAs come into therapy to process their experiences and how those have impacted their identity and relationship with themselves. Some of the goals TCAs might seek to achieve through seeing a therapist include:

• Understanding and fleshing out the picture of your cultural identities

• Identifying and grieving changes that feel like a loss of a piece of identity

• Reengaging or expressing parts of your identity that those around you have caused you to suppress or feel unable to engage with

• Finding a sense of connection with self, culture(s), and others as someone with multiple cultural identities and multiple cultural selves

• Navigating being a parent of TCKs and their identity formation as individuals and a family

• Finding ways to be better seen and understood for who you are by the important people in your life

• Leaning into the strengths of being a TCK while limiting ways that its difficulties hold you back from your goals