ESL School

and meet friends and family, you feel elated. But quite often depression sets in quickly. In the first place, things at home have changed in ways you didn’t expect.
People have changed jobs, got married or divorced, had children, moved away…it makes you feel unsure where you fit in.

And even the things you did expect seem a trial: maybe you’ve lived in a hot climate and find the cold and the rain hard to bear.
Then you might start missing the friends you made abroad and the places you got to know, which now seem a lot more attractive than what’s on offer at home.

Your experience of another culture may have made you reconsider your values and the people at home and their ordinary lives might seem selfish or banal or boring or materialistic. You will find yourself comparing your home culture to what you have left behind. In fact you may feel as if people who have not widened their horizons as you have done seem narrow and dull.

Your emotions surprise and worry you: you feel like a misfit, you don’t know what to do. In fact coming home seems to have exposed you to just as much discomfort as going abroad in the first place.

However, all of this is normal. Just as you needed to adjust when you left, so you do when you return. To cope with this readjustment, allow yourself time. Try to talk about your feelings with somebody who respects you. Keep in touch with your friends and colleagues overseas so that the rupture is not total.

Do some hard thinking about the direction you want your life to take over the next few years. Can you make use of your overseas experience in some way? What skills have you acquired that you can transfer to your new life at home? If the feelings become too strong or last more than a few weeks, seek professional help from a counsellor or doctor. Essentially this is a period of transition and you need to work through it before you can settle into the next phase of your life.