Homesickness During the Holidays
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Moving to a new country is exciting and it’s an adventure. All is well. You arrive and you’re adjusting marvelously to your new life, making friends and performing superbly at your new job. You feel at home in your new country after a few months. But that feeling, for a time at least, sometimes goes away during the holidays.
You begin to notice how new your home is and start pining for the holidays of you’d grown up with. If that sounds familiar, read on. There are a number of techniques you can use to get over the holiday homesick hump.
Why Holiday Homesickness Feels Stronger
Holidays are filled with full of emotions, family traditions as well as cultural practices. You will start to do and feel things you are not accustomed to, but in strange permutations, a few shades off of recognizable. Social media can also exacerbate the feeling when you’re watching loved ones rejoice from back home.
And these months, around the holidays, can feel especially emotionally heavy due to shorter days and certain seasonal changes to weather and culture. Knowing the reason these feelings pop up may help you better deal with them.
Coping with Homesickness While Abroad
Expat Family
One way to make dealing with loneliness and culture shock easier while overseas is by joining other expats. Leverage the holidays to play connections you’ve already got. Hang out with the expat family when you miss home and feeling homesick.
They’re probably in the same boat as you are, and missing their home countries too. If you belong to an expat community when there are lots of you around, find someone from your home country to hang out with that’s also pining for home at this time of the year.
Be Patient
Time will go by whether you’re happy or not. And for those expatriates living a short-term life: Keep in mind that you only have a limited number of days to enjoy. Sometimes, it might even be beneficial to take a break from focusing on the things and try to distract yourself from homesickness.
Just focus on the new experiences you have had and some new ones that await, and just know that soon enough you’ll be home.
Contact Family Back Home
This was all before you could easily chat by video, text each other and communicate by email on smartphones — when the options to eagle with other countries were either dialing up for a phone call or going postal. And if you were feeling homesick, your best move was to pick up the phone and call home to get updates from all your friends and family.
And now you can see your friends and family on the holiday. Think about it. Wherever your friends and/or family members are, they could put a laptop or a tablet at the head of your dining room table and eat with you this holiday season.
Keep in Touch with Your People Back Home
Sure, it’s not the best way to spend time with your family for sure, but being able to see the smiles on your family members’ faces would certainly beat a boring phone call wouldn’t it?
Create New Traditions Abroad
Creating new traditions will help you feel grounded, too. Try putting a local twist on your home holiday traditions and mixing them with your ritual that you already know. It also portends feeling more at home in your new country.
Whether it is going to a holiday market, taking a local celebration together or making new rituals with friends, some new traditions might be a way of your holidays to be special instead of just sad.
Practice Self-Care During the Holidays
Missing home sucks, and its definitely worse over the holidays. Take care of yourself: go outside for fresh air, get exercise and keep good habits. Journaling or engaging in mindfulness work are other tools that might help you process your emotions.
Avoid isolating yourself. Even a short walk or a visit to a coffee shop, or listening to music that you love, might make you feel lighter at times.
Stay Busy and Connected
You will never think of home, and the homesickness is only distant memory. Check out local attractions, travel on weekends, volunteer and join clubs or community groups. These will keep you busy, engaged and focused on what you still have (and not just be aware of what’s missing).
Attending local events (holiday events or expat meetups) can have you feel part of a community and combat that feeling of isolation.
Celebrate Anyway!
When you leave your own country and move to a new one, it’s good to maintain some of your own traditions. No matter what holidays mean in your part of the world, remember them in small ways — wear something festive and go to celebrations or tell your neighbors about some of your festivities.
That can make the season feel a little more normal and comfort-minded, whether you’re far from home or in it.