Lois Bushong, Author of Belonging Everywhere and Nowhere: Insights into Counseling the Globally Mobile brings us her 5 Essentials For Parents Transitioning Kids Abroad guide. Lois discusses the role of international school counselors and expat parents, Third Culture Kids (TCKs) and Adult Third Culture Kids to enable successful transitions between schools, locations and cultures.
Read MoreLois Bushong, Author of Belonging Everywhere and Nowhere: Insights into Counseling the Globally Mobile brings us her 5 Essentials For Parents Transitioning Kids Abroad guide. Lois has extensive personal and professional experience working with both expat parents, Third Culture Kids (TCKs) and Adult Third Culture Kids and her work focuses on embracing the benefits and managing the challenges that the expat families face when going through global transitions.
Read More“I can’t make any friends here”!
I think this is the most frequent complaint that I hear from my TCK clients. It doesn’t matter their age, I heard it from several of the teen TCKs last summer who presented for therapy in my office. I heard it from a couple of young, adult TCKs fresh out of college as they were trying to negotiate their new world. And most recently, I heard it from my middle age, TCK client.
No matter their age, their complaints are the same.
for me, an adult TCK who didn’t go to just any high school but rather to a boarding school, it was a highly emotional event. Back in the day, landing at Toccoa Falls Academy in northern Georgia began for some of us the lonely path of adjusting to a new culture, grieving too many losses known and unknown to us, and experiencing a freedom (and a loss) of being several countries away from our parents. During my youth, I did not recognize the value of good friendships. Yet those Toccoa Falls Academy friends were to become my family for three years.
Sadly, after graduation, I lost touch with them. Now, I’ve come upon the landmark of the Academy’s 50th at the same time that I’m arriving at what psychologist Erik Erikson identifies as the stage where we reflect back on our life.
Read MoreAs a Third Culture Kid, I was able to freely fly from land to land, forest to forest, mountain top to mountain top and just up into the blue sky. Today, I am often in the company of friends who share their worldwide adventures with excitement and wonderment. I am happy they get to travel this world and I soak up all of the details about those other worlds out there. Yet, I feel like Rosita, with my clipped wings, pacing my perch with my up-to-date passport safely tucked away close to my perch.
Read More“The Cultural Psychology professor asked each student to ‘Describe how your family celebrates Thanksgiving.’ The TCK in the class was confused about answering that seemingly simple question: ‘It depends on where we are at that time as to how we celebrate Thanksgiving.’ The professor tried again, ‘Well, describe how your family celebrates Thanksgiving culturally.’ Again, the TCK did no know how to respond to the question and expressed his inability to answer this question since his family had made so many transitions between cultures. The professor kept interrupting his questions and restating the assignment, ‘How does your family celebrate Thanksgiving?’ At this point, both the TCK and the professor were frustrated – their cultural worlds had unknowingly collided. The professor of Cultural Psychology was completely unaware of the multi-cultural world of the TCK and it hadn’t occurred to the TCK before that it was so unusual to have celebrated Thanksgiving in so many ways.
Read MoreThe TCK, who is depressed, may not know why they are depressed; all they know is they are miserable. As therapists walk through the symptoms of depression with the TCK or gives them the Beck Depression Inventory, the client might certainly fit into that diagnosis. But rather than making the TCKs current situation as their only focus, such as what we do when we do Brief Therapy, here are some other areas we, as therapists, might explore.
Read More“I will see you at the big mango tree down by the front fence”.
Those were the words you wanted to hear from a friend when you needed a listening ear, a confidant or a partner in crime. This is how I want to use my blog, for those private and serious reflections about the life of the Third Culture Kid, the expat and the mental health counselor.
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