Belonging in Translation: Autism, ADHD, and the Hidden Labor of Adapting Across Cultures

Contributed by: Laura Mannucci, Licensed Psychologist

The term Third Culture Kid was coined in the 1950s by American sociologist Ruth Hill Useem, who studied the children of American expatriates living in India. Useem noticed that these children did not fully belong to their parents’ home culture, nor to the host country’s culture. Instead, they developed a third culture, a hybrid identity built from living among, between, and beyond multiple cultural systems. Her later collaborations with John and David Pollock expanded the concept into what we now understand as the Third Culture Kid experience: growing up across cultures during formative developmental years, often resulting in a strong sense of adaptability, global awareness, and empathy, but also at times rootlessness, loss, and identity diffusion. Pollock and Van Reken’s book Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds (2001, revised 2017) remains the foundational reference in the field.

Psychologists use the term acculturative stress to describe the emotional strain that comes from adapting to a new culture, the invisible weight of learning new rules, decoding gestures, and constantly adjusting who you need to be to belong. For Third Culture Kids, this stress is not a one-time experience like culture shock; it is an ongoing negotiation between worlds. It is learning to bow in one country, hug in another, and then forget both because the next place greets with a handshake. It is realizing that humor, silence, eye contact, or even how close you stand to someone all change meaning depending on where you are. Over time, this constant translation can bring flexibility and empathy, but it can also leave a subtle exhaustion, a feeling of being slightly off no matter where you go.

For many adults who grew up between cultures, the aftershocks of adaptation appear later, in their twenties or thirties, when the structure of school and relocation is replaced by work, relationships, and self-definition. For those with ADHD or autism, this transition can be especially complex. What once looked like flexibility may reveal itself as exhaustion. Years of decoding unspoken cultural rules, learning when to speak and when to stay quiet, how to dress, gesture, or express emotion in ways that feel appropriate, can lead to a quiet kind of burnout.

In women, this often shows up inwardly as self-doubt, anxiety, or a persistent sense of disconnection. Many describe living as if slightly out of sync with others, watching themselves perform competence while feeling hollow underneath. Shame becomes the background music of daily life: why can’t I just be like everyone else. In men, the tension may surface more outwardly, as frustration, restlessness, or anger when control or predictability slips away. The drive to succeed in new environments can mask deep fatigue, and emotional intimacy may feel confusing or unsafe.

Underneath both stories lies the same root: a life spent masking, not only neurodivergence but cultural difference itself. When you have learned to mirror others to belong, the authentic self becomes hard to locate. It is not lost, only buried under years of adaptation.

This is where mindfulness, understood not as a performance of calm but as an act of gentle reinhabiting, can help. Not the staged version of mindfulness that asks you to empty the mind or sit perfectly still, but a simpler form, noticing your breath when you change countries, your heartbeat in a crowded train, the taste of food that feels like home. It is an invitation to belong again to your own body, without needing to fit any particular culture’s rhythm.

Mindfulness, in this sense, becomes a form of de-acculturation, a quiet return to what is organically you. It offers a space where the nervous system can rest from its constant translation work, where identity is no longer something to manage but something to feel.

Belonging, for Third Culture Kids and adults alike, is rarely a single destination. It is a rhythm that moves through places, languages, and selves. For those who are also neurodivergent, the journey can feel like a constant recalibration between visibility and safety, expression and acceptance.

To live between cultures and with a brain that perceives differently is to live at the intersection of nuance. The task is not to perfect adaptation, but to reclaim authenticity, to find moments, however brief, where the inner and outer worlds align.

Mindfulness, at its most human scale, can be that meeting point. Not a performance or a technique, but a quiet gesture of coming home to the breath, to the body, to the life that has always been yours. It is the moment you stop translating yourself for the world and let yourself be understood in your own language.

Author: Laura Mannucci, Licensed Psychologist

Laura Mannucci is a clinical psychologist specializing in mindfulness-based and cross-cultural therapy. Having lived and worked across Argentina, Italy, Saudi Arabia, and the UK, she supports neurodivergent Third Culture Kids and international families navigating identity, belonging, and transition.

References

• Useem, R. H., & Useem, J. (1967). The interfaces of a binational third culture: A study of the American community in India. Journal of Social Issues, 23(1), 130–143.
• Pollock, D. C., & Van Reken, R. E. (2017). Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds (3rd ed.). Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
• Berry, J. W. (2005). Acculturation: Living successfully in two cultures. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 29(6), 697–712.
• Daugherty, A. (2018). From Mindfulness to Heartfulness: A Journey of Transformation through the Science of Embodiment. Balboa Press.
• Lai, M.-C., Lombardo, M. V., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2014). Autism. The Lancet, 383(9920), 896–910.
• Matlen, S. (2021). Women with ADHD: The hidden struggle of being misunderstood and overlooked. ADDitude Magazine.
• Hull, L., Mandy, W., & Petrides, K. V. (2017). Behavioural and cognitive sex/gender differences in autism spectrum condition and typically developing males and females. Autism, 21(6), 706–727.