Between Cultures: Identity, Belonging and Finding Your Own Way

It is late in the evening. A group of friends sit around a restaurant table, finishing their desserts and immersed in a robust conversation.

Hours, perhaps days later, if each were asked what happened that evening, they might tell quite different stories. Each may remember different words, interpret a particular exchange differently, or give significance to something the others barely noticed.

This is no longer about the Truth, rather that our experience and recollection of an event are inevitably shaped by where we were standing: by what we noticed, what mattered to us and what we understood to be happening at the time.

“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.”
~ Graham Greene

This interplay of perspective, story and meaning also shapes how we come to understand who we are.

Identity, culture and the gaze of others

Our identity is formed partly at the intersection of the image we have learned to hold of ourselves – the conditioned self – and the gaze of others: who they believe we are, who they expect us to be and, sometimes, who they need us to be.

It is within this interplay that we also experience a sense of belonging.

The “right” identity may open the door to the club, whatever that club may be. The “wrong” identity, even the unexpected one, may be met with disapproval, exclusion or rejection.

This is particularly complicated for those who grow up between cultures, or whose cultural identity is shaped by different and sometimes competing systems of meaning.

What happens when the places in which we seek to belong appear to ask different things of us?

One culture may value individual autonomy, while another places greater emphasis on family and collective responsibility. One may encourage you to speak openly about what you want; another may teach you to consider first how your choices will affect those around you.

There may be different expectations around family, relationships, gender, religion, work, success, duty, or what it means to be “good”. These may be expressed in the academic path you are expected to pursue, the career from which you are not meant to diverge, or the guilt that may accompany choosing not to have children.

For those navigating a bicultural or multicultural identity, the question may seem to be – which version of me am I allowed to be?

An example

Something similar often happens in the therapy room. Here, too, different people may make different meanings of the same experience.

Take for instance, when parents bring a young person to therapy. I begin by explaining the confidential nature of therapy and the importance of building a therapeutic relationship founded on trust and safety. I may then invite the parents to describe what concerns them and what has led them to seek support for their offspring. Later, I listen to how the young person understands what is happening.

Often, their accounts differ considerably.

What the parents experience as the “presenting problem” may not be what troubles the young person most. The same behaviour or situation may hold a different meaning for each of them. A therapist does not need to select the “correct” version of these competing accounts. A therapist does not dismiss the significance of the situation to the young person or their parents. In fact, each offers insight into the person’s experience, relationships and understanding of the situation.

Therapy is rarely about uncovering one definitive version of a person’s life. It is about attending closely to how they experience and interpret what has happened and how the meanings they have made may now be affecting the way they live.

This does not mean that everything is simply a matter of perspective. Harm, consequences and responsibility remain real. But people rarely arrive in therapy as neutral observers of their own lives. We make sense of our experiences through the stories available to us, and those stories are shaped by language, relationships, culture and history.

Stories and words are contextual, conditioned and encultured.

The mind may also interpret events in ways that protect our sense of who we are. We construct explanations that allow our choices, or the choices we have accepted from others, to remain consistent with the image or identity we hold of ourselves.

I have done this myself, although I could not see it at the time. I found ways to explain or excuse other’s destructive behaviour because doing otherwise would have unsettled my image of myself as capable and discerning.

Therapeutic conversations helped me see the stories I had been telling myself and what those stories had allowed me not to see. That awareness was invaluable.

When belonging comes with conditions

Within this interplay of identity, culture and relationship, belonging is a powerful human need. Yet “belonging” can sometimes appear to come with conditions.

To remain part of one world, you may feel that you must quieten parts of yourself that fit more comfortably in another. All of us respond to context, and moving between cultural worlds can involve considerable awareness, flexibility and skill. Our strength lies in the capacity to know when to bring which parts to the fore and when to allow them to take a back seat.

But when adapting becomes habitual self-silencing – to conceal your needs, values or experiences – it can become exhausting. You may begin to wonder which is the “real” you.

Perhaps there is no single, culturally untouched self waiting to be uncovered.

Human beings are more complex than the categories we create for ourselves. Culture is not necessarily an either/or proposition, and identity does not have to be reduced to a choice between two opposing sides.

Growing up between cultures does not inevitably require choosing one and rejecting the other. 

Finding your own way

Within this complexity, finding your own way may begin with becoming curious about what you have inherited.

• Which values genuinely matter to you?
• Which expectations continue to serve you?
• Which parts of your cultural upbringing give you strength, connection and meaning? 
• Which leaves you feeling constrained, divided or unable to live in accordance with what you now believe?

There may be values and practices from each cultural world that you wish to retain, others you want to reinterpret, and some that no longer fit the life you desire.

This exploration is not necessarily about choosing one culture over another. But it is most certainly about discerning what feels sustaining, life-giving and congruent, and gradually developing a way of being that can hold the complexity of your experiences.

Our identities are relational, and the choices we make may carry conflict, grief and certain consequences for our sense of belonging.

Finding your own way means allowing yourself to examine what you have been given and deciding, with greater awareness, what you wish to carry forward.

Perhaps identity is not something fixed that we eventually discover. Perhaps it is more about giving yourself permission to participate in its creation.

Are you ready to attend to the vital things in your life?

I especially value working with people navigating questions of culture, identity and belonging; if this speaks to you, I invite you to book a complimentary initial call to explore whether working together might be a fit. Here’s a link to book in.