When You’re Always Adapting: A Look at Code-Switching

Have you ever caught yourself speaking one way with family, and a completely different way at work or with friends? Maybe your tone shifts, your accent changes, or certain aspects of your personality step forward while others stay hidden. This quiet shapeshifting is known as code-switching.

While the term originally referred to switching between languages or dialects, it’s now understood much more broadly. Code-switching can include changes in behaviour, tone, body language, humour, or emotional expression, depending on who you’re with or where you are. It’s something many of us do – often without even realising.

As a Thai/Chinese Third-Culture Kid who grew up across households in Thailand and the UK, I’ve been shapeshifting for most of my life. The voices and versions of me that developed in different families and cultures helped me adapt to the people and situations around me. Some of those versions served me well. Others left me feeling more fragmented and uncertain than whole.

Later in adulthood, I noticed how uncomfortable I felt with my voice, not because I disliked it exactly, but because I wasn’t sure what my real voice sounded like anymore, or who I truly was beneath all the roles I’d learned to play. After a lifetime of shifting and adapting, I had lost touch with what felt most like me.

Code-switching can be a powerful tool. It helps us move between worlds, connect with others, and protect ourselves when needed. But it can also come at a cost to our identity, our clarity, and our sense of belonging.

I hope this article will help you understand what’s happening when we code-switch, and offer some ways to care for yourself if this has become part of your everyday life.

What is code-switching?

At its heart, code-switching is about adapting. It’s the small (or big) ways we shift how we show up in order to fit in, avoid conflict, be understood, or stay emotionally or physically safe.

It might look like:

• Speaking different languages or dialects with family, friends, and colleagues

• Presenting yourself differently in different cultural settings

• Toning down your accent to be accepted or approved

• Changing your name or appearance to fit in

• Hiding your humour, opinions, or quirks to avoid judgment or conflict

• Downplaying your beliefs or cultural practices to avoid standing out

These shifts can happen consciously, but often they’re automatic, learned responses shaped by past experiences and the environments we move through.

Why do people code-switch?

Code-switching isn’t only about language. It’s about belonging, survival, and safety, especially if you’ve ever felt like you didn’t quite fit in.

People who code-switch often do so for different reasons, including:

• Wanting to be accepted or respected

• Trying to avoid judgement, criticism, or conflict

• Needing to feel safe in unfamiliar or uncomfortable environments

• Managing cultural expectations across different communities or generations

• Feeling pressure to be seen as your “ideal self” around certain people or in uncomfortable settings

While it’s often associated with multicultural individuals, Third-Culture Kids, or people navigating minority identities, many people code-switch. Even within the same culture, someone might act differently at work than they do with close friends, or adjust their behaviour around authority figures.

Still, for cross-cultural individuals, marginalised identities, LGBTQ+ folks, neurodivergent people, and others who’ve felt ‘othered,’ code-switching can be more constant and more deeply tied to identity and emotional safety.

Is code-switching a bad thing?

Not necessarily. Like many of our coping strategies, code-switching can be both helpful and exhausting.

Some positives:

• It’s a sign of emotional intelligence and social awareness

• It helps you navigate different roles and spaces

• It can keep you safe in environments where full self-expression doesn’t feel welcome

• It can reflect your rich, flexible identity – knowing how to move between worlds

But over time, especially if it’s constant or subconscious, it can also carry a cost.

Some challenges:

• Feeling like you’re never fully yourself

• Emotional exhaustion from being “on” all the time

• Anxiety about how you’re being perceived

• Losing touch with what feels authentic or safe for you
  
  

“When code-switching becomes a survival strategy rather than a choice, it can lead to identity confusion, burnout, and a deep sense of disconnection.”

How to look after yourself when code-switching is your norm

If code-switching feels like second nature or something you do without realising, you’re not alone. Here are some gentle ways to care for yourself and stay grounded in who you are:

1. Notice when it’s happening
   Start tuning into the moments you shift your tone, posture, energy, or language. Are you doing it because you want to? Or because you feel you have to?
   
   
2. Get curious, not critical
   Instead of judging yourself for being a chameleon, ask what it’s trying to protect you from. Often, code-switching developed for a reason – to keep you safe, included, or accepted.
   
   
3. Create spaces where you don’t need to switch
   That might be therapy, close friendships, cultural spaces, or even time alone. Having places where you can just be helps balance the effort of constantly adapting.
   
   
4. Reconnect with your own voice
   Write. Reflect. Speak in your “most comfortable” tongue(s) – mix it up, if that feels true to you. Say things out loud just for you. You don’t need to perform or filter all the time.
   
   
5. Explore the impact in therapy
   A culturally sensitive therapist can help you untangle the layers – what was learned, what’s protective, and what still feels necessary. Together, you can explore what authenticity looks like for you.

I’ll leave this with you

Code-switching isn’t a flaw. It’s a skill. A survival tool. A reflection of the many layers that make you ‘you’.

But you also deserve to exist in spaces and relationships where you don’t need to keep adapting just to belong. Where you’re safe enough to bring your whole self to the table, no edits required. That starts with noticing, with compassion, and with finding your way back to yourself.

The journey back to myself was long and sometimes bumpy. I thought I was searching for one clear, authentic truth. But I came to realise that what I needed wasn’t a single version of me. It was to accept all the different versions, and to express them with intention, not fear.

If you’d like support on your own journey, I’m Star, an experienced therapist working with adults from multicultural and international backgrounds. Feel free to contact me for a free 15-minute introductory call.