You adjust your accent slightly in the meeting. You laugh off the comment about where you’re “really” from. You think twice about your hair, your lunch, how direct you sound, whether you seem too quiet or too much. By the time you get home you’re exhausted, and it’s hard to say exactly why, because on paper nothing happened today.
October is Black History Month in the UK, and this year’s theme, Honouring Our Communities, recognises the people whose contributions are part of everyday life yet too often go unseen. It feels like the right moment to talk about something that is also part of everyday life for many people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, and that also goes largely unseen: the quiet, constant work of adjusting yourself to fit in, and what that work costs.
Code-switching is the habit of changing how you speak, behave or present yourself depending on who is around you. Everyone does a version of this, since most of us talk differently to our boss than to our oldest friend. But for many people of colour, the shift is bigger and more constant. It can mean softening your accent or your natural way of speaking, avoiding topics that might mark you out as different, choosing your clothes or hairstyle with other people’s comfort in mind, or keeping your reactions carefully neutral so you won’t be read as “aggressive” or “difficult”.
Often it isn’t even a conscious choice. It is something learned early, sometimes from parents who did the same thing to get on, and it can become so automatic that you only notice it when you’re finally somewhere you don’t need it.
If this sounds familiar, you don’t have to work it out alone. I offer online sessions across the UK and internationally, in English and Cantonese, and a free initial consultation is a relaxed first step. Book a free consultation →
Alongside code-switching sit microaggressions. Mind describes microaggressions as “the most common form of covert, interpersonal racism”, and notes that they can be very subtle: implying someone doesn’t belong, making assumptions based on race, or dismissing their experience of racism when they raise it.
Any single one can be easy to shrug off. The difficulty is that they rarely come one at a time. Mind points out that experiencing racism regularly, across different parts of life, can start to affect mental health more and more, and that many people carry a background worry about how they will be perceived and treated. That background worry is a big part of what makes the working day so tiring.
Staying alert to how you are coming across, and bracing for the next comment, is a form of vigilance. Vigilance is useful in short bursts, but when it becomes a permanent setting, the body and mind never fully get to rest. The Mental Health Foundation links experiences of racism with anxiety, hypervigilance, exhaustion and lower self-worth, and describes how the stress of racism can affect both mental and physical health.
In practice, people often describe it like this: feeling flat or irritable after work without an obvious reason, needing a long time to “come down” in the evening, second-guessing themselves in meetings, or slowly losing touch with parts of themselves they used to enjoy. Some people notice that the version of them at work has started to feel like the real one, and that can be unsettling in its own way.
Code-switching is often talked about in the context of Black experiences, and rightly so. But it shows up in many communities. East and South East Asian professionals, for example, are often described as “quiet” and “hardworking”, which can sound like praise while quietly limiting how they are seen, particularly when it comes to leadership. Many learn to make themselves more agreeable and less visible in response. The stereotype can look complimentary from the outside while feeling very limiting from the inside.
As someone originally from Hong Kong, who relocated to the UK in 2021, and spent over 30 years working in Human Resources before becoming a counsellor, this is territory I understand both personally and professionally.
Whatever your background, the common thread is the same: spending a lot of your energy managing how other people see you, and having much less left over for yourself.
There is no single fix, and it isn’t your job to single-handedly change a workplace culture. But there are things that can ease the load:
Name it. Recognising that you are code-switching, and that it takes effort, is often a relief in itself. Tiredness that has a reason is easier to be kind to than tiredness that feels like a personal failing.
Find your decompression spaces. Notice where and with whom you can drop the effort, whether that’s certain friends, family, community groups or time on your own, and protect that time deliberately.
Keep a record. If comments at work are repeated or cross a line, writing them down with dates can help you see a pattern clearly, rather than doubting your own memory, and it gives you something concrete if you decide to raise it.
Choose support that gets it. Mind suggests looking for a therapist who understands your cultural practices and values without making assumptions, and who understands how racism can affect mental health. The Black, African and Asian Therapy Network (BAATN) is a UK directory of therapists from Black, African, Asian and Caribbean heritage, and is a good place to start if that matters to you.
You shouldn’t have to leave parts of yourself at the door to get through the day. Therapy can be one place where you don’t have to translate yourself at all.
Therapy won’t change the environment you work in, but it can change how much of it you carry home. It offers a space to put down the effort for an hour: to speak in whichever way, and whichever language, feels natural, without managing anyone else’s reaction. From there we can look at what the constant adjusting has cost you, untangle the messages you may have absorbed about how acceptable you are, and work out where you want to draw your own lines, at work and elsewhere.
For many clients, part of the work is simply having their experience believed rather than explained away. That alone can take a surprising amount of weight off.
If this post describes how you feel at the end of most working days, it is worth taking seriously. I work online via Google Meet with clients across the UK and internationally, and I offer sessions in both English and Cantonese.
A free initial consultation is a relaxed, no-pressure chat about what you’re experiencing and whether working together could help. I see adults across the UK and internationally via online sessions on Google Meet.