Perhaps we are all immigrants
trading one home for another
first we leave the womb for air
then the suburbs for the filthy city
in search of a better life
some of us just happen to leave entire countries.
Rupi Kaur
Some years ago, I moved to another country at the age of 28. Although it was not my first experience of trading one home for another, this time I didn’t have a come back plan. Feeling somewhat overwhelmed, I packed my whole life into countless boxes while binge-playing Stuart Staples: I get that leaving feeling, this time it’s here to stay.
New destination was a neighbour country with comforting level of familiarity. The idea of a slight cultural novelty even excited me, it seemed like just the right amount of shock. Nevertheless, I felt a certain mental strain that goes along with such transition.
Expat lifestyle lay ahead of me with all its phases of adjustment, as well as nostalgia, longing, anxiety and perhaps denial. Could I do anything to ease the stress that will accompany moving to another country? I decided to try to prepare myself for this pursuit.
Collecting “dos and don’ts” from people who already had the experience of emigration seemed like a reasonable start. I even made notes on some of them – listing the challenges that people were facing as well as what they found helpful in overcoming them. Furthermore, within my professional context I had a chance to work with expats who wanted to explore ways of handling their experience better through the psychotherapy context.
The pursuits I was hearing about only had similar names but were actually representing quite different quests. I kept wondering – what will my quest be like? What will my biggest adjustment challenge be? What are the most difficult things to leave from my soon to be “old” life? If I needed to give up on some parts of myself – which ones would I keep?
Owing to the years of my own psychotherapy I already had some of the answers to these questions. I knew what were the core parts of my personality and what compromises I wouldn’t like to make. I knew what scared me about leaving and how to get reassurance if I needed it. One of my preferred ways of coping was taking photographs of people and places that mattered to me. Coffee shop I would stop by every weekend, favourite place to buy fresh tulips at the market, vibrant sights of my friend’s homes (their pets!).
One expat friend of mine remembered her professor saying: “You have no idea how many things I had to grow out of and give up on to go from there to here”. As much as I much as I cared about my integrity, it became clear that the change was inevitably about to happen “around” me as well as “within” me.
Obviously, I’ll change my geographical coordinates. After moving to another country, I’d surely need an app such as Google Maps to be able to navigate from point A to point B. The other transition is the one that happens within our own personal maps of reality. It usually starts previous to our departure and can be marked by different emotions.
As I was sharing my emotional baggage with a friend, she replied that to her “it really doesn’t matter what geographical coordinates people and places are at, as long as you know where they are located on your map.” These words of wisdom brought certain relief to me at the time. The whole truth was – if I never explored a map of my own reality before (as I did within psychotherapy), I probably wouldn’t be able to tell a lot about what I expect to change. Furthermore, I wouldn’t know how to create a map that is capable of handling transitions.
Perhaps I’d be surprised by, for example, how insecure I might feel when I am perceived as a “foreigner”. Or puzzled at this “introvert” part of me that prefers not to engage in talks with people that don’t share my “old” world. Or, as another friend of mine, I could withdraw from socializing because my humor was labeled as “too offensive and degrading” by a few members of the new community.
When moving we inevitably face some new roles that society has for us. Maps of our own reality might need an update that can be crucial for our well-being. Exploring that uncharted territory might be more important than walking down our new town with Google Street View (as entertaining as it is).
I’ll share with you one of the tools that helped me and some of my clients explore deeper what the transition can bring. It’s engaging and quick – whether you’d like to try it out for self-exploration or use it as material for a psychotherapy session. The idea is for a person to draw oneself in the “old” environment as well as oneself in the “new” one. Drawing can facilitate expressing topics where words don’t come easy – we might draw what we find hard to say. It doesn’t matter if you’d already moved away or you’re contemplating that alternative. After you’re done – share them with us in comments to the post if you’d like or send it to our inbox!
Instruction to the drawing technique
Part 1: Drawing the kind of person you are in your “old” environment
Take one piece of plain paper and put it in front of you oriented in vertical (portrait) style.
Think about the kind of person you are in your “old” environment. Make a quick sketch of this person in the middle of the page.
How would you describe this person? What kind of person are they? By the side of the sketch, write 3 things about what s/he is like.
Then think about some of the following aspects of that person’s life and draw the ones you chose to:
– the bag,
– the birthday present,
– the partner,
– the family,
– friends,
– greatest fear of that person,
– what would make this person happy.
Feel free to add any ones that might not be included in this list.
Part 2: Drawing the kind of person you are in your “new” environment
Take another piece of plain paper and put it in front of you oriented in vertical (portrait) style.
Think about the kind of person you are in your “new” environment. Make a quick sketch of this person in the middle of the page.
How would you describe this person? What kind of person are they? By the side of the sketch, write 3 things about what s/he is like.
Then think about some of the following aspects of that person’s life and draw the ones you chose to:
– the bag,
– the birthday present,
– the partner,
– the family,
– friends,
– greatest fear of that person,
– what would make this person happy.
Feel free to add any ones that might not be included in this list.
Part 3: Mapping the transition and movement between the person you are in the “old” environment and the person you are in the “new” environment
Place the two sheets of paper on a table, with the first on the left. Then put another sheet of plain paper in a horizontal (landscape) position in between the drawings and draw a horizontal line the length of the middle sheet. Think about differences and similarities between the two drawings. Think about the pathways of transition between the two drawings.