3 Reasons Why Being a TCK is Challenging. (Share your burdens here)
This is a writing exercise. Name 3 reasons Why being a TCK is challenging.
Do you think being a TCK sucks? Well, some TCKs seem to think so. It’s challenging if you have restlessness, a lack of identity, short-term relationships and unresolved grief. If you’ve been on the site long enough, then you won’t be surprised to find out that some TCKs have had to deal with issues like depression, drugs, alcoholism, and self-injury.
-Do you feel like you don’t belong anywhere?
-Do you have short-term relationships and friendships (18 months to 2 years)?
-Do you have a lot of unresolved grief and sadness for breaking off relationships and friendships?
-Do you feel restless and unable to deal with it?
-Have you always felt you never got a say when your parents decided to move?
We have many hidden losses and unresolved grief. It’s time to write about them.
This post is about naming 3 reasons why being a TCK is challenging. Name your losses and allow yourself to write about your deepest feelings.
“Why write about negative emotions? Isn’t that a bad idea?”
Pennebaker, a professor in the Department of Psychology at The University of Texas at Austin is a pioneer in the study of using expressive writing as a route to healing. His research has shown that short-term focused writing can have a beneficial effect on everyone from those dealing with a terminal illness to victims of violent crime to college students facing first-year transitions.
“When people are given the opportunity to write about emotional upheavals, they often experience improved health,” Pennebaker says. “They go to the doctor less. They have changes in immune function. If they are first-year college students, their grades tend to go up. People will tell us months afterward that it’s been a very beneficial experience for them.”
So.. what did you lose? What are you really angry or sad about? What are your fears? Who hurt you and who did you hurt?
You can rant and express yourself and post anonymously if you want by logging in as “anonymoustck”.
Username:anonymoustck
Password:anonymoustck
ON THE POSITIVE SIDE: Should my children be TCKs? and What’s the best thing about being a TCK? Read reasons why being a TCK has been a positive experience.
February 7th, 2008 at 8:32 am
I still have funny dreams where I turn the corner in a familiar city and then I’m somewhere I don’t recognize at all and I’m lost!
This can happen when I turn the corner or go back to get something because I forgot something and then the road disappears, or I get on a train and it goes somewhere unrecognizable.
It probably has something to do with having moved around :p
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February 12th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Restlessness and uncertainty
I Dont sleep very well, want to move all the time.I Love airports but hate going to them because I have this unresloved conflict of weather I should just blow all my money and fly away to some other place! I can never settle, which is really bad now that I am in college because I cant decide if I have the right major, or if I am in the right place or if I should transfer to a german Uni. Also this situation is not helped by my father who emails me at least onece a week with links to different Uni’s in Europe. How annoying.But mostly not knowing weather I want to do with my life and where I want to spend it. I never stop thinking about this. The idea that I may not be able to make it as a classical musician or ever get a job teaching at an international school makes me so anxious!
2. Hiding emotions 3. fear of opening up and having relationships
I am really good at hiding my feelings.If you meet me you would think I was a very happy love life type of person, which I am normally, but I never shoe any other emotions. If I am so good at hiding my grief to make my parents not feel bad about moving me and my brother all the time. Although I act happy all the time I have trouble letting out my emotions. I conceal them so well but they all bult up so that through all of highschool and even sometimes in college I just cry uncontrollably alone in my room. The only person who has ever seen me like this is my brother, who is the only person in the world who has an idea of what I feel like. Even he and I have has vastly different experiences, he was so much younger than I. I moved mostly during my adolescence(well still am I am only 18), and it wasnt until my last lear of high school that I had 3 friends who were going to last a life time. But then in august I was stung again by that bitter emotion of leaving any sense of security or love. Never again will I open myself up like that again… rrr….I cant believe I thought it would hurt less if I allowed myself to really love those people. I hope we don;t lose contact, but over time it is inevitable, I know this from experience. ;-(
I am lucky to be a TCK, but there are so many things that I never knew or will. Like living in the same place longer than 4 years or having a stable community who understands, me. I dont even know how to open myself up to anyone because I know that they wont understand me at all. It is so hard to have relationships with some people. I mean, I dont blame them or myslef , but I hope some day I will get over this.
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February 21st, 2008 at 12:47 pm
1. It’s always me who has to look strong, reliable and smile all the time, just because I am apparently the “more experienced and open-minded” person. So I should always be understanding toward other people’s pathetic complaints about life that’s honestly not half as problematic as my own.
2. It’s ok if they always want me to be all understanding because obviously I should be, but it’s SICKENING when they never try to understand you and they feel like you were born to be different and not understood, and they think we don’t need to be understood and we are not human or sumthing.
3. Sometimes, we get those moments when we look at mono-culture people and just get reli sick. Obviously we understand that’s how they grew up but the way they act like no other races exist in the world and don’t give a damn about global issues and actually say the most DISCRIMINATING things ever while thinking they are totally being reasonable DRIVES ME INSANE! CUZ THEY ARE NOT! Esepecially annoying when your whole family is mono-culture. And since I am Chinese I hear a lot of rude comment toward homosexuality from family and people. I get so angry because some of my best frds are les, and i want to punch ppl for insulting them but i Can’t cuz they would be like “OMG U SUPPORT HOMOSEXUALITY OMG THIS KID IS BRAINWASHED SAVER HER!” so yah in situations like this I can only hurt myself to release anger, bite my fist so I don’t scream out insults or punch them in the face.
wow that was quite a rant.
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February 22nd, 2008 at 6:56 am
1. Friends: Having lost touch with my childhood friends means I don’t have any friends that I’ve known more than a couple of years. I moved from Brussels 12 years ago to a small village in northern Denmark - you would get beat up for wearing the wrong sweater: imagine being from another country. Basically, this made my transition living hell, and I’m still recovering twelve years later.
2. People who Downplay The Importance of Cultures: a lot of my closest friends have absolutely no idea that there is a disadvantage in having lived different places. Knowing langages/cultures is a plus, but going through a lot of your life feeling like a freak is not one of them! Also - if you’re monocultural, you have no idea what it actually MEANS to have been imerged in diff. culture. Yes, we’re all human, no we’re not all alike.
3. Playing the Chameleon: If you constantly hurt yourself to the values of the New Culture, you end up thinking that there’s something wrong with you, because a lot of their behaviour hurts your feelings and your beliefs at the same time. Thus, you end up having relations with people that somehow feel “fake” - because you can never really tell them how you feel.
Although being intercultural has many, many advantages, I think we only fully realise it later in life, once we’ve acquired some perspective to what actually happened.
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March 1st, 2008 at 3:15 am
I think I might be in a very minority group of people that think this way, but I actually think that being a TCK has helped me form better relationships! Because I am used to saying goodbye, I open up a lot easier and faster so that no time is wasted! I don’t want to miss out on what could be an amazing friendship simply because I was too shy for the first year to actually let them know who the real me is! To me, it is like the saying, “Its better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”. Yes, you might leave them behind or they might leave you behind and never see each other again but the friendship and connection you shared for even the briefest time will always be with you in your memories, and you will always have the knowledge that you are always in their memories. That connection, is to me, what being human is all about and because TCK’s tend to have to build this connection with more people than a ‘normal’ person would, makes us privileged!
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March 1st, 2008 at 5:05 am
That’s true for me too. Our friendships might be short, but they can be very intense, and extremely rewarding.
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March 1st, 2008 at 5:14 am
Personally I think the title makes a fairly big assumption that being a TCK sucks in the first place.
Being a TCK doesn’t suck. It’s just human. If we were mono-cultural we’d still find things to suck about, and that would just be being human too.
It just seems to have an overwhelmingly negative slant. As if it were a curse.
It’s not a blessing or a curse, because we’re human and are the product of ourselves and our environments. You just learn to make the most of it, just like everything else.
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March 1st, 2008 at 9:19 am
Now, as an adult, I love being a TCK. But “reentry” at age 12 sucked! It wasn’t reentry — I had never lived in Canada before.
1. Change in climate. I hate cold, rainy places. I had always had sunshine and heat.
2. Being “stupid”. I didn’t know the pop culture, the slang, the styles. I had never ridden a school bus, used a drinking fountain or a phone, had a street address to memorize, been to a mall… The things I knew had nothing to do with the new life I was in. No one cared that I knew how to shop in three languages, how to bargain, how to find my way in most major airports, how to recognize the signs of typhoid and malaria… Even today in grad school, I find I don’t know as much of the culture as I thought I did. I’m totally confused when they talk about tv shows from my childhood; we didn’t have tv overseas.
3. Losing friends. I have met most of them again since we left home, but my best childhood friend I have never found again. It took a long time to make a lasting friendship.
I had depression, grief, suicidal tendencies, rage, and loneliness. It took a lot of work to deal with, but now that I am on the “other side”, I am so grateful for my growing up. I know that there is life outside of “Hickville, USA”; I speak at least a little of several languages, and quickly pick up new ones; I can relate to many cultures and don’t have issues with racism (except Canadians!); I travel overseas a lot, something I’ve discovered my US friends are nervous about doing; when countries are on the news, I know where they are and usually a little about the nation; I know that North America is not the center of the universe!
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March 2nd, 2008 at 12:15 pm
1. The Beginning
When you arrive in a new country and you look out your window and see a city you don’t know, like, or are interested in, and yet you know you’ll have to live here for at least a year. When you get to school and you just feel sick in your stomach for the 1st few days because the kids ignore you, the teachers patronize you, and when you get home you have nothing to do. When you miss your old friends and home so much you want to cry.
2. The Middle
When you look around at your classmates and wonder why you can’t laugh like they do, why you don’t know all the stuff they know, why you can’t get as good friends with others as other get with their friends. When you feel so different, not as happy, and older.
3. The End
When, despite everything, you get to become good buddies with people, you like the culture, the school has grown on you, and you learn you’ll be moving in a few months. The pain of saying goodbye to everyone and knowing most of them you’ll never see again, you won’t stay friends with, and that you might never come back to the place you spent a whole year or two in.
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March 3rd, 2008 at 7:49 am
I’m 19 and i’ve moved 12 times in my life..the longest i lived anywhere was 4 years and that was ONCE, when i was in elementary school…after that i’ve basically moved every 11 months.
being a TCK sucks right now because well….i just have NOT IDEA who i am. i feel like all i’ve been doing in my life is adjusting to this place or the other..this culture, that culture, this person, that person..all to fit in, make “friends” and get by.
i’m sick of not knowing whether i am somebody…
i also feel very lonely all the time. i get sick of trying to explain my issues to people because their answers make me feel like “everybody” goes through them…and i know that’s not the case. it feels like friends simply minimize and underestimate whatever im going through…and i mean..i cant blame them. they dont know what it is like.
i guess the worse thing is being depressed right now. i’m alone in the US, my younger brother is in Chile and my parents are in the Philippines. i haven’t seen my family for over 14 months and i dont know when i’ll see them again. i’m going through a rough time financially, so i work part time in order to pay for school, but it’s way too much. i can’t really do both..but i dont hava much of a choice if i want to go to college…so yea. i can’t sleep but once i fall asleep i dont want to wake up again (EVER). i don’t eat cause im never hungry…i mean..i do eat once a day cause i know i have to, but most of the time i feel like NOT EATING. lately i’ve been thinking of not eating anything for a couple of days to faint in class/work or something..i just wanna do anything that will let me stop working and studying. i need a break..i feel like i have no space to breathe anymore.
my parents keep on telling me to go see a psychologist, but i dont want to. i was supposed to go this morning, but i felt like crap so i didnt show up.
so i guess right now i HATE
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