Culture, Identity and Self: What Do We Carry With Us?
Updated: Sep 10
What does culture mean to you?
It sounds like a simple question. Yet, when we begin to think about it, culture can be surprisingly difficult to define.
Is it the traditions, values and expectations we grow up surrounded by? Is it the way our families raised us, the communities we belonged to, the language we spoke, the food we ate, or the unwritten rules we learned about how to behave?
Or is culture also something more personal? Something that continues to evolve as we grow, move between places, meet different people and develop our own sense of identity?
Recently, during a workshop exploring culture, identity and self, I was asked to describe my own culture in just one word.
The first word that came to mind was:
Welcoming.
What “welcoming” means to me
I grew up in Turkiye, surrounded by Turkish culture, and when I reflect on what I have carried with me from that upbringing, being welcoming feels particularly significant.
For me, welcoming goes beyond hospitality.
It means making space for people.
It means recognising that someone can be different from us without that difference needing to become a barrier. People may come from different cultures, religions, ethnic backgrounds, families and life experiences. They may think, communicate, love, grieve or experience the world differently from us.
Being welcoming, to me, means remaining curious about the person behind those differences.
Of course, no culture can be reduced to one characteristic, and my experience of growing up in Turkey is only my own. But when I think about the environment in which I was raised and the values I chose to take forward from it, this sense of openness and acceptance is one of the things I value most.
It has become part of who I am.
When culture becomes part of identity
This made me think about the relationship between culture and identity.
Perhaps we do not simply have a culture.
We inherit parts of it. We question parts of it. We leave some things behind. We reinterpret others. And sometimes, particularly when we move away from the place where we grew up, we begin to notice aspects of our culture that we had never consciously recognised before.
Living in another country has certainly made me more aware of this.
As a migrant, there can be moments when you suddenly become conscious of being “the other”. It may not be something anybody says directly. Sometimes it can be subtle: an interaction, an assumption, a reaction, or simply the feeling that something about you is being understood through the lens of where you come from.
Even when these moments are small, becoming aware of them can feel unsettling.
At the same time, living between cultures can offer another perspective. It gives us an opportunity to ask:
Which parts of the culture I grew up with do I want to carry forward?
For me, welcoming is one of them.
Culture is not only where we come from
The more I reflect on it, the more I think culture is not simply something that happened to us in childhood.
It continues to evolve.
We are influenced by the culture we were born into, but also by migration, relationships, education, work, parenthood, loss, belonging, exclusion and the communities we encounter throughout our lives.
We can carry more than one culture within us.
And sometimes our personal values may align with aspects of our culture, while at other times we may consciously choose a different path.
Perhaps, then, identity exists somewhere in that conversation between what we inherited and what we choose to keep.
Bringing cultural awareness into the counselling room
As a counsellor, this reflection also made me think about what it means to welcome another person into the counselling room.
Every client arrives with their own world.
Their experiences may have been shaped by culture, family, migration, religion, ethnicity, gender, relationships, social expectations, language, belonging and many other parts of their identity.
I cannot assume that another person's experience of any of these things is the same as mine.
For me, culturally sensitive counselling is therefore not about knowing everything about every culture. That would be impossible.
It is about being willing to listen.
To remain curious.
To notice my own assumptions.
And to create a space where a person does not have to leave important parts of themselves at the door in order to be understood.
Perhaps that brings me back to the word I started with.
Welcoming.
Not simply as something I associate with the culture I grew up in, but as something I consciously choose to carry with me, both personally and professionally.
Because culture may shape where we begin, but throughout our lives, we also have the opportunity to decide what we carry forward.
So, if you were asked to describe the culture you carry within you in just one word, what would your word be?
