My Go-to Tip for Dealing With Homesickness

Homesickness when you’re living far from home is completely normal.

But you don’t have to let it control your experience abroad.

This is a truth that I wish I would’ve known during my first year abroad.

I spent so much time feeling homesick, but trying to shove it down and distract myself with social plans.

The thing is, when you push a feeling down all it does is make it stay longer and come on stronger.

If you’re feeling homesick, I’ll take a guess that this is the last thing you want right now!

Luckily for you, after nearly a decade of living abroad and coaching expats to their best lives abroad – I’ve come up with a handy approach to navigating homesickness like a pro!

Let’s dive right in!

Step One: Connect

The first thing I advise clients to do when they’re going through a period of homesickness is to connect.

What this means is simply to connect to the part of you that you miss.

Homesickness in its very definition is missing our home country, culture, and our loved ones back home.

Connecting with this part of you can look like calling a friend or family member back home. Cooking your favorite dish from your country, or even journaling about the things you appreciate about your home country.

This can be whatever you want it to be! The goal here is to connect to the part of yourself that you’re missing right now in whatever way you can.

It’s important to not skip past this step, or shove down your feelings of homesickness because this will just make them linger longer.

Instead, acknowledging that you’re missing home, and connecting with people or parts of home is necessary to make space for connecting with that part of you that makes you, you!

Step Two: Explore

The next step is to explore.

Explore your new home by going on a hike, a walk, exploring a new neighborhood, going to a language exchange meet up, trying local foods, getting involved in an Expat community like Internations to meet new people.

While it’s super important to validate your feelings of homesickness, it’s equally important to explore your new home and connect with new people, or nature.

Even going to a coffee shop by yourself can get you excited again about why you moved abroad in the first place.

The connect part of dealing with homesickness allows us to process our feelings.

The explore part allows us to get excited about our new home, and make social connections that are essential in living a full life abroad.

Why is this important?

We don’t move through the wave of the feeling of homesickness but just connecting or just exploring. There needs to be both components in order for us to healthily move through feelings of homesickness.

Homesickness can actually be an opportunity to appreciate unique things about our culture, and friends and family back home.

When we make space for missing home AND exploring our new home, we open up space to meet ourselves where we are and still go out there and LIVE our lives abroad.

TLDR

Homesickness is no fun, but doesn’t have to control your experience abroad. Move through homesickness by first connecting to the part of home that you’re missing, such as calling a family member or friend, or cooking your favorite dish from home. Then explore your new home by attending an Expat event, a local language exchange, or exploring a new neighborhood to get excited about all the wonderful things you can do in your new home.

If dealing with homesickness, as well as getting out there and making the most out of your new life abroad is something you’d like 1:1 support with, I’ve got you!

Schedule a free consultation call to learn more about 1:1 coaching!