Finding belonging as a third culture kid with Joshua Tan - Podcast Shownotes

Immersion in multiple cultures throughout childhood fosters excellent cross-cultural skills and an effortless ability to adjust to new situations. For some third culture kids, these traits are acquired at the cost of their home culture and native languages. This void becomes a problem when they repatriate or try to settle down somewhere else. 

The repeated losses of belonging, recognition and connection caused by regular moves can trigger mental health stresses among TCKs.

Podcast Excerpts 

The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. 

Alyssa: How would you define what a third culture kid (TCK) is?

Joshua: A TCK refers to somebody, under 18 years, who was raised in a different culture or country other than that which is on their passport, or that of their parent(s). 

In short, born in one country, and raised in another (or several others) and having to form a culture that is in between all the elements of different cultures that they’ve lived in. That is what ‘third culture’ refers to in “third culture kid” 

Alyssa: So, take us through your story. How would you answer the question, where are you from? 

Joshua: I would say the short answer is that I’m from Singapore. But the medium answer I’ll give today is that I was born in Singapore, at 6 months old, I moved to Thailand with my family and moved to a lot of towns across Thailand. At five, I was sent to a boarding school in Malaysia. I came back to Singapore when I was nine and was fortunate enough to stay here for a longer period of time. But when I was 13 to 16, my parents left my sister and me here in a hostel and went back to Thailand to work. In my late 20s, I went to the UK to study and I’ve just come back from those studies. 

Alyssa: You moved back to Singapore when you were nine, was there a reverse culture shock? What was it like to adjust back into the place that is supposed to be your home?

Joshua: It’s supposed to be home but it doesn’t feel like home. I remembered I really struggled coming back. It was so different from anything that I had ever known. The culture is different, the way people spoke was different, but I didn’t have the vocabulary to talk about it. But my body knew at that time - when you look at the idea of trauma and difficult experiences, often a lot of that is stored in the body. The body will respond even though the mind can’t really put it into words. 

For the first week of school, I was throwing up every single day. The most embarrassing occurrence was on my first or second day, I threw up all over the steps of the school bus. Everyone was looking at me and I just felt incredibly embarrassed. 

So it was a struggle, and it continued to be a struggle for many years just to feel like I fit in well with all Singaporeans. 

Alyssa: What would you say are the benefits of this kind of childhood? Going to live in a different place and having the privilege of travel at an early age.

Joshua: It definitely is a privilege because to be able to see the world and travel when I was five, that was amazing. It’s such a gift to be able to see so many different cultures and it makes you incredibly adaptable and open-minded. These are the things that have been instrumental in my adult life. 

Alyssa: What do you think are the drawbacks of having this kind of childhood and ultimately, repercussions on your mental health and sense of identity? 

Joshua: I would call it the dichotomy of privilege. Because I was in a position where I was travelling and these are the things that people won’t necessarily have. I was constantly reminded of that by the adults around me. Because of that place of privilege, I feel like I can’t talk about things that I was struggling with because I’m just complaining. Therein lies a problem; if you stay silent about it, that impacts mental health because it compounds. Often, it’s when you feel powerless, that it creates the spirals and beliefs about yourself in the mind. 

It was very true for me. When I came back and didn’t have the vocabulary for it. By the time I was 15 or 16, I was really struggling with quite a deep depression and anxiety and wasn’t sure where it was coming from. 

Alyssa: How did you use your dissertation with art therapy to process what your TCK experience was like? 

Joshua: Everyone processes things differently. That’s the understanding that we’re coming to know that everyone heals so differently. I always tell people that the gravity of other people’s struggles, in no way invalidates your own. What’s really important is that you acknowledge it. 

I’ve realised that I process things by making art. When I started art-based research for my master’s thesis, I knew that I wanted to look at my own experience as a TCK, how it affected me and I wanted to make plates. Initially, I had no idea why I wanted to make plates until I realised maybe it’s because I wanted to eat. In all that, there was the whole idea of how food is such an important thing for me because food represents culture, sitting together at a table, eating together and a community. I ended up making a plate for each year of my life. 

At the end of it, I laid out all my plates on the table. When I looked at it, there was incredible synchronicity with the years of my life. The year that I had moved countries, were the years that my plates are balled up, they’re completely messed up. In the years that I was struggling, with fitting in, with my mental health, plates are smashed and broken. 

It was an alternate timeline for me and writing a timeline is so important for TCKs because our experiences are fragmented and when it’s fragmented, it’s hard to get that sense of self. 

Calm Conversations is a podcast series launched and facilitated by Calm Collective Asia. A means of sharing personal experiences, lessons, and advice, we speak to people from all walks of life about topics that are universally relevant yet often still taboo in the hope of normalising conversations about mental health. 

Available on Spotify, Google, and Apple, you can tune in whenever and wherever. We hope that by listening in, you feel less alone, learn something new, and find the courage to continue these conversations with the people around you. Stay calm!