What Therapy Can Miss When We Live Between Worlds
Published
Written by Rose Chahla, LPCC
Living Between Worlds
Home and the outside world don't always ask the same things of us. Many people grow up learning how to navigate multiple worlds at once. Long before we have language for it, we learn to adapt depending on where we are. This experience is often familiar to children of immigrants, first-generation Americans, and people from communities that have historically navigated life between cultures, identities, or systems that were not designed with them in mind. While no two families are the same, we can recognize common themes: sacrifice made on behalf of future generations, pressure to make use of opportunities others never had, language or cultural barriers, and the challenge of building a sense of home between worlds.
Beyond Individualism: The Role of Culture, Family, and Context
For some, this means carrying not only personal aspirations but also family hopes for mobility, security, and opportunity. Many become cultural brokers, translating not only language but also values, expectations, and systems. We learn to navigate family obligation, intergenerational mobility, and, at times, parentification. In the process, we often develop a remarkable ability to read context, negotiate competing realities, and recognize power dynamics. These skills can serve us well, contributing to academic achievement, professional success, ambition, and the ability to navigate complex environments.
At the same time, constantly adapting ourselves to different worlds can become exhausting, especially when it feels unclear where we fully belong and whether there is a home even within ourselves. Palestinian-American writer, poet, and clinical psychologist Hala Alyan explores in her work on diaspora and identity: how many lives can one person belong to? For those navigating life between cultures, that question has no clean answer.
What Traditional Therapy Can Overlook
These experiences can complicate many of the assumptions embedded in mainstream American culture and, at times, in therapy itself. Concepts such as boundaries, independence, and individualism are often presented as universally healthy goals. For those raised in collectivist cultures or communities where identity is deeply relational, however, these ideas can feel incomplete or disconnected from lived reality. Advice about "setting boundaries" may sound straightforward in theory but feel far more complicated when family, identity, belonging, and responsibility are deeply intertwined.
In therapy, these tensions can easily be misunderstood when cultural context is overlooked. A well-meaning friend, coworker, or even therapist might encourage someone to say no to family obligations, move away, or prioritize independence without fully understanding the guilt, grief, or cultural loss that can accompany those choices. What is framed clinically as individuation may not feel liberating to everyone. Sometimes it feels like risking connection, reciprocity, or belonging.
Too often, the conversation is framed as a choice between self-sacrifice and self-protection, between loyalty to family and loyalty to oneself. But many people are not looking to sever meaningful connections or reject the values that shaped them. Instead, they are trying to find a way to honor both their own needs and the relationships that matter to them, while navigating the tension that can arise when those priorities come into conflict.
What Therapy Can Offer Instead
Therapy should be a space where nuance is possible. Cultural identity, family obligation, and collective values should not be romanticized or demonized. When therapists fail to understand the unique pressures clients navigate across cultures and systems, we risk reinforcing false binaries and offering solutions that feel disconnected from clients' lived realities. Culturally responsive therapy requires more than awareness of difference; it requires curiosity about how people define responsibility, closeness, choice, ownership, and care within their own cultural and family systems.
The work is not choosing between oneself and the communities that shaped us. It is learning how to care for themselves without abandoning the relationships, cultures, and values they hold dear. Healing is often found not in choosing belonging or selfhood, but in learning how to hold both with greater clarity, intention, and self-compassion.
Written by Rose Chahla, LPCC | Published June 2026 | Last updated June 2026
Rose Chahla is a licensed therapist offering individual therapy, couples therapy, and career coaching for adults throughout California via secure online video. She specializes in working with adult children of immigrants, cross-cultural identity, relationships, burnout, and life transitions. If you're navigating questions of identity, belonging, family expectations, or feeling caught between different worlds, I invite you to reach out to learn more about working together.