Friday, July 9, 2010

Expat syndrome

Some of the work that I do is with English speaking expats. I can tell you from the experience with my clients that moving to a new place and adjusting to a new culture can be hard. Especially for the "serial movers".
Sometimes it happens that seemingly perfectly adjusted individuals present anxiety disorders and depression. These are usually the kind of people that manage to cope on a conscious level, by rationalization, to the change. But their unconscious mind feels the rupture, and when they deny it consciously, the unconscious manifests itself through sleep disorders, anxiety and depression. And since from their point of view adapting to this new environment was not a problem, these symptoms scare them because they fail to understand the cause.
Another characteristic of these frequent movers is that at some point they realize that any new meaningful relationship is doomed. At some point they would have to leave and also leave this relationship as well. Some invest at first emotions in these relationships, and when they first have to move they feel like they lost a friend for instance and they feel hurt and disappointed. And so from fear of getting hurt they stop investing emotion in any new relationships, which in time leads to feelings of loneliness, and back to the same symptoms I talked about before.
I am only sharing this so you could get an idea on what the psychological dynamics of these individuals might be. Of course, it is not always the same.

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