Expat Pains

Simply said it are emotional pains caused by relocation. An accumulation of negative emotions you experience after the move. Even though the move is something positive and exciting, negative emotions are part of the adventure as well. Negative emotions being triggered simply comes with the new, international lifestyle you are now living. 

You’ve moved to a foreign country with a language you don’t speak, where the laws, culture, customs and ideologies are different. You’re dealing with all kinds of challenges, such as the administrative and financial decisions that come with purchasing a car, property, health insurance, etc. etc. On top of that your support network is in another country, the place you used to call home.

Being an international living abroad, you’re emotionally more vulnerable because you’re away from the social network you used to belong to. And even though you might speak with friends and loved ones on a regular base, they don’t really know how your life looks like now. Not the deeper level of it. Which is something you might not easily share over the phone. 

Temporarily less bandwidth available 

Did you ever experience this: while you could effortlessly travel from point A to point B before the move, now driving from A to B takes effort? You might find yourself postpone going out, without even knowing why. How come? 

Because in your former country, you had a map in your head, one that has point A and B clearly mapped out. Without having to go there, you know where all the other points of the alphabet are located as you have history in your old country: Point D is where you had your work, G is where you went to school, point K is where you had your first kiss and point M is where the accountant is. You could go to any of these places without effort, on automatic pilot, without using much of your energy. 

Now in your new country, everything is new, going somewhere takes effort!

And maybe you don’t want to be challenged now, not even slightly challenged. You’ve had had enough challenges lately. Your nervous system has been stretched out for a long time and you want calm and ease. On an unconscious level you long for effortlessness, because your nervous system is in the red zone and needs calibrating. 

This calibration can only happen when you start giving yourself that break. This is how it is possible that after all the necessary things are done, you just want to relax, because, besides of all the good and positive things that have happened to you, your system has also been challenged and overwhelmed for a very long time. 

There is no time line on when you reach these points of staying in, or going in “hiding mode”. It can happen within 1 to 3 years after the move. Depending on your capacity to understand your emotions and to take care of yourself. 

Let’s identify some more emotions that internationals might experience

General anxiety, loneliness, homesickness, relationship problems, isolation, loss of purpose, feelings of not belonging, feelings of overwhelm. 

If you experience any of these emotions, I want you to know that you’re not doing anything wrong and you’re not stupid. Experiencing these feelings is normal, it’s simply part of the package that comes with your new life style of being an international living abroad. 

Use your expat pains as an opportunity to grow as a person

For those of you who are keen on understanding their emotions and wanting to learn some skills how to identify and transform them, here are some self-care tips. 

We’ve now established that moving countries can stir up strong emotions. Without the ability to recognize your emotions, the emotions can take you over completely. What that means is: when the emotional influx comes, it takes you over: it controls what you feel, what you think, what you say and what you do. The emotion is in charge of you. 

What is an emotion?

Like a thought is an energy entity, an emotion too is an entity that is an energy form. You can’t see it, you can only see how it manifests in your behavior and your perception of the world surrounding you. In the case of the international living abroad, how you can feel isolated, not belonging, etc.

An emotion is an energy form that lives in you. Once you recognize it, awareness of the entity comes in. You can see it is not you, it is an energy form inside of you. Without awareness you can be run by your emotions. 

That means overwhelm, anger, sadness, anxiety, isolation or jealousy invades your body and rises up in the mind, which means it controls your thinking. 

When you feel angry and the emotion has risen into your mind, every thought you think reflects the emotion that you feel because the emotion is thinking through you. And the emotions is feeding your thoughts, so the loop happens, the vicious circle. The emotion creates thought and the thought amplifies the emotion. 

In the case of anger, you get more and more angry. The more you think about it, the more angry you get. Until finally you lash out!

I’d like to introduce the term “painbody” here

What do I mean this?

The painbody is an accumulation of old emotions that still live in you as a cluster of energy, an entity. An accumulation of negative emotion that often begun building up in your early childhood. Since then it hasn’t left you, it still dwells in your body somewhere, for example in the chest or in the throat. Eckhart Tolle, spiritual teacher and author has first named this cluster of old negative, childhood pains the “painbody”. 

To create awareness around this it is helpful to look at it as a little entity, a gremlin that lives in you 

* Sometimes it’s dormant for periods of time. However it can’t stay dormant for ever, it hast occasionally be fed. So from time to time is rises up in to your mind an suddenly you get taken over by this old emotion. 

* Sometimes it’s triggered by an event and you usually know it’s the pain-body when your reaction to the triggering event is out of proportion to the triggering event. The reaction is far greater than would be warranted by the triggering event. This usually means it has triggered old, latent emotion in you. 

This is how the painbody comes to life again and takes over your mind. You are no longer you then, you are the pain(body). You can temporarily turn into a weird, awful person, who says or does the worst things to loved ones or even strangers. 

Moving country may awaken your painbody and you can suddenly find yourself into a lot of drama. Just because you can’t get your postbox placed, Covid has forced you to lockdown, or your parcel can’t be traced and is lost. 

Pain needs more pain

I shared earlier that the painbody wants to be fed; this is why it craves negative thinking. Thought is energy, it feeds the emotion and the emotion gets even stronger and you’re back in the loop, which makes you more and more unhappy. 

What happens when you start complaining to others, share your pain over and over again, you are actually feeding the painbody. What you give your attention to grows.

To take it a step further, some people can be addicted to unhappiness. Negative thinking can become addictive. Why? The negative emotion wants more of itself. It wants to be fed by the thinking that reflects the same vibrational energy frequency. Every negative thought feeds a negative emotion. A positive thought cannot feed a negative emotion, they are simply not in sync.

That is why it loves to hang out with other negative people, to complain together. When there is no awareness about the existence of the painbody, these people don’t see it as complaining, but as stating facts. 

This I how the pain body operates

The emotion wants to speak through you and looks for something negative to say, just to feed the loop. It‘s crazy, but it’s all unconscious behavior. And for many people considered as normal. The unobserved mind gets taking over by toxic thoughts, by old, childhood emotions that are triggered and are now awakened.

Through lack of awareness you are at the mercy of your emotion fields. 

The moment awareness comes in the emotion may still be there, but you are not totally possessed by it. And that is an enormous step forward!  

Recognise that there is a very strong energy in you and be the observer of your thoughts and emotions. 

Take a deep breath into the abdomen, and take a few more. Your attention will follow the breath and leave the body. 

The only place where there is freedom from the emotions of the past, is being in the present moment. The moment you become aware is the time to observe your inner state and step out of the loop. 

Freedom arises and you can see the outer circumstances for what they are, without being pulled back into the painbody. 

Keep on breathing gently and generously and start connecting to your body, feeling the aliveness in your hands, in your feet and in your chest. 

The emotion may still be there for a while, but you’re not consumed by it anymore. When feeling into the body, the emotion cannot renew itself and you free yourself from it.

This might be a good moment to go out in nature and release the last reminders of the emotion, including whatever it was that triggered it.

This is how you can turn your expat challenges into a personal victory

and create emotional balance

Ria van Doorn is a life coach for internationals living abroad and founder of the Expat Centre Portugal. 

contact@riavandoorncoach.nl