The life of a Third Culture Kid therapist

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...

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/...

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 offe...

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...

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. Se...

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. Hos...

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...

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 rachelcason@explorelifestory.com 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....

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.