Common Mental Health Struggles for Third Culture Kids
When I was in grad school I wrote my capstone paper on TCK mental health. At the time, it was difficult to find published information on the topic, or at least the kind that I could cite in a graduate level research paper. There were a handful of academic books and some peer reviewed literature, but most of what had been written was anecdotal. My text books were helpful for general mental health knowledge and therapy approaches, but none of them acknowledged that Third Culture Kids were a thing.
This is a big problem for a number of reasons, but my chief concern in my field was that so many of the therapists entering the workforce have no idea what this term means, how to recognize if their client is a TCK, or how this might change how they understand and work with them. Therapists who know about TCKs are more likely to learn it from personal experience, not professional training.
Within the last few years, more and more has been written about TCKs. People are starting to intentionally research how TCKs’ childhood experiences impact their mental health later on in life. This is a great step in the right direction and I look forward to a day when the data is so clear that TCKs feel validated and understood by the general population, but more importantly, by the mental health care professionals and emotional support people in their lives.
Whether you are a fellow therapist, a person in a caretaking/support role for a TCK, a TCK themselves, or just a generally interested person, the very fact that you found this little blog post is a sign that you care and want to know more. Thank you for being here (for showing up for someone you care about or for yourself!), and I hope this information that I share can pique your curiosity, compassion, and appreciation for TCKs and what they go through.
My paper highlighted four key areas of TCK mental health and wellbeing. These are not unique to TCKs and not every TCK experiences them. But they are common enough in this population to be both a part of the limited data set available to me at the time of this paper, as well as a common theme in the stories and experiences I have encountered.
1. Cultural identity confusion
By definition, TCKs experience multiple cultures during their formative years. Because cultural identity largely forms during adolescence, experiencing mobility during this time has more impact on their identity than the same experiences have on an adult. Each TCK will have their own way of making sense of these experiences. Maybe they take a little bit of each culture they interact with and combine it into their own unique “cultural soup”. Or maybe they pick one or two they relate to the most and reject the rest. Maybe they have no idea who they are and are just confused all the time (that was me!). One of the articles I found used the term “cultural homelessness” to describe what it was like to not feel like you truly belong anywhere and how this can be linked to low self-esteem (Hoersting and Jenkins, 2011). What a powerful phrase!
2. Unresolved grief and depression
Some TCKs move around a lot. Some move only once or twice. Either way, each move is accompanied by grief and loss. Some of the losses are obvious (a house, a school, a community, friends and family etc.) others are less obvious (sense of self, identity, belonging, stability, safety etc.). When this goes unprocessed and unaddressed, it can develop into depression or other mental health struggles that can persist into adulthood. Some research suggests that the more mobility a child experiences during their formative years, the more likely they are to develop negative mental health outcomes later on in life (Webb et al., 2016). It could be that the very fact that they move a lot predisposes them to struggle in ways that kids who grow up in one place do not.
3. Challenging social development
Childhood is when people learn “how to be a person” in the contexts of their peers - a SUPER important survival skill as a human! Social development impacts soooo many aspects of just general human development: self-concept, communication skills, conflict resolution, emotional regulation, learning how we are perceived by others and how to interact with the world around us, etc. (THOSE things are so well studied that they are just commonly accepted facts at this point). When you grow up bouncing around between multiple different cultures, switching schools, moving countries, needing to learn new languages and make new friends (and likely always being an outsider no matter where you go) that presents challenges to healthy social development that can impact every other aspect of necessary human development that I mentioned above. Sometimes we don’t even notice how uniquely this altered our development until we start to notice specific struggles or differences with these areas later on in life.
4. Primary or secondary exposure to trauma
Because of the nature of some TCK’s parents' work (such as military, disaster relief, etc.), some kids might straight up live in war zones. Others might live in extremely impoverished areas of the world and witness aspects of life (and death) that they would not otherwise have been exposed to. Some TCKs are at higher risk of experiencing trauma directly, others simply witness it through hearing their parents tell stories, knowing about things happening in their communities, or just seeing it on the news. Sometimes bad stuff happens to TCKs. Sometimes TCKs just know about bad stuff that could happen. Both of these are traumatic.
These are obviously not things that are unique to TCKs. All people can struggle with any of these four things. TCKs simply are much more likely to have one or more of these experiences because of the very thing that makes them TCKs: living where they live and moving when they move.
I don’t write all of this to preach some sob story about the “poor TCKs”. I write it because I sincerely don’t think that all parents and sending organizations think about how this lifestyle can affect their kids. And 9 times out of 10 that is not their fault - no one ever told them that these things could happen! The fact that I had such a difficult time finding data for my paper just further indicates that these conversations are not happening enough or in the right places.
The truth is, TCKs are awesome. I think there are a lot of amazing, unique strengths that come out of the TCK upbringing that monocultural people do not have the opportunity to experience (I’ll have to do another blog post just about those!). And at the same time, TCKs are just people - human beings trying to navigate a challenging world, find out where they fit, what their purpose is, what brings them joy and hope and fulfillment. That journey just might be a bit more challenging for them than for others because of the circumstances of an upbringing that they did not choose for themselves. The message of hope here is that there are ways to support people who go through stuff like this. Be curious, ask questions, don’t assume you know what a person is going through. Look for professionals who do the same thing, (bonus if they are TCK-informed). Therapy exists for a reason, and I hope it becomes continually more accessible to the people who would benefit from it.
Whether you are looking for a therapist or just want to continue this conversation, I am here for you and happy to talk!
-Maria
