in today's episode, we are going to continue our chat about the emotional terrain of life abroad specifically the difference between culture, shock and homesickness. You are going to learn some simple tools to help you manage overwhelm and reconnect with your inner compass and find balance in your new country. Welcome to starting over in the USA, the Expat Woman's Guide to overcoming homesickness, embracing cultural differences, and creating a new home away from home. On this podcast, we talk about leaving behind the familiar, you know, the pangs of homesickness and culture shock to the journeys of reinventing yourself. I'm Yolanda Reshemah. And after relocating six times, I know firsthand what it's like to start from scratch, feeling like both a foreign child and a foreign adult in a new world. So how do you know if what you're feeling is culture shock or homesickness or both? Today I'm back with Dr. Veronique, and we are going to explore how to recognize these emotional states, how to honor them without letting them define you and how to gently return to the present moment where your new life in this new country abroad is unfolding. I wanted to pick up with you if we can just jump into it. Is there a difference between culture, shock and homesickness? Do they tend to show up together? They're different. Uhhuh And last time I remember, and I will give you the same example. It's a friend of me going to India. And she was very excited to go to India. She went out of the airport and she was so shocked about what she discover. She go back, take a plane, and come back home. Ah. Culture shock. It's too much. You are overwhelmed. Normally when you arrive in a new country to live there, the three first months, you are very excited. Everything in new is new. Everything is interesting. The three first months, but after three months, you begin to miss home, food, friends, parents, this is homesick. Very different. Very different. And also something else homesickness. Okay. Can appear like I cannot support those people anymore. Or I cannot support this country anymore. Just be aware of it. It'll pass. Best thing is to go outside for a weekend or a week, depending what you can do. For example, in Singapore we go to Batam. Batam is in Malaysia, Indonesia, just a weekend. You are happy to go outside, this is how you treat homesickness. When I was living in Korea, I like to go to Japan even for weekend, uhhuh. So after when I was coming back to Korea, everything was fine. But for at least a few days I was out. So this is homesick. So you have two version. I miss something or I can't stand them anymore. I miss something or I can't stand the people where I am now. I want to go back where I was. So these are the feelings we should expect. When we feel these things, we should realize, these are symptoms of being homesick. I don't need to make rash decisions. And leave again. No. Wait, it'll pass. But, you know, after three months, after the excitation, get done. Suddenly. You would like something of your old habits, like, this food that you like so much and you cannot find in this country, depending of the place where you are. Yes, of course, because for example, in Korea it changed, but when I was there, okay, it was only Korean food, Uhhuh. So western food were very difficult to find. Now it's not the case. They have more international, restaurants but in Singapore, you have everything, All kind of restaurant, all kind of food. Singapore is very small. So even if you try to go hiking this way, at one point you say, Hmm, I need to go out. And it's true that for all experts here, we are very lucky because we can take the plane easily to go anywhere around. So this is the example I can give you. It's how you manage homesickness. How long does the period of feeling homesick or experiencing culture shock last? Because I feel as though the initial three months of joy and happiness is like being a tourist, right? Yeah. Being a tourist or being in love, you know what I mean? Reality gets in. Okay. So that's it. But as I told you before, culture shock is very different from homesickness. Homesickness, it's something that will stay. Culture shock is too strong. You have to do something about it, if you don't act on it, like my friend, she was really overwhelmed, she knew nobody there because she decided to go alone, which I will not, advise for a woman going alone when she realized it was too much, it was a visceral reaction she had to leave. It's very violent. It's not rational. Homesickness is different. It's low level. So you can think and act about it. For example, if you can, be kind to yourself, have a home, made meal with the, the plates you like, the meals you like, so it'll help. Maybe speak with some friend home or things like this. Right. But please don't position yourself as, oh, my poor self, I'm a victim if you have this speech, you label yourself and it'll stay. Once you say something, you will go on saying the same thing. Yes. So, home sickness, we can expect that it will. Remain at some low level continually, as long as we were away from home. Not because what I will say is yes, it touch you after first three months. But when you go beyond that, you fine. You just know that from time to time, okay, I need to go out for some days. There are so many things going through my head because I'm thinking about my experiences I hope this helps expat women listening as well I have often wondered if I was homesick for England fish and chips things I never used, places I didn't really go to. Being in America the first year, every time I think back to England, I want to go to all the pubs and have the pub meals, I'm imagining that life back at home was perfect and wonderful. There was something going on in my mind that is not real. I'm limited and fantasizing something about the place that I left Forgetting why I left Yes. The first place. What, what? Okay. This is a very good remark. Okay. Is how you idealize the country you left forgetting that maybe not everything was perfect and you had good reason to left. So what I want to see say here is don't live in your head. Don't live in your past. If you are today, for example, in America, what is good where you are now? Move yourself. Go and discover what is good where you are. Because this idealization, okay, it's like stopping you to discover what you are you have now. You make yourself miserable, you don't need this. You leave your old partner. And because you are alone, it's like, oh, but he was not so bad. It was a great guy. No, no, no. You leave him for good reason. I was messing with my own mind. Very often we get lost in our mind. And stop using what we feel. Something I do for myself, is I like to write, I like to journal. Good. Maybe it might help writing down the things I miss about home, but also writing down the opportunities and reasons why I left England what made me excited about moving to America. That's what I do for myself. I write a lot. I love language. I love words. When you write about England. I prefer you to be in the present time. What do you like here? What do you don't like here? How was your day? What did you enjoy? What are you grateful for? Present time. Stay in the present. Every time you are in the past, you are lost in your head, present time is only about what I feel. For example, you meet some people during the day. What did they make you feel? Was it pleasant? Unpleasant? Did you like this woman? Maybe you can have a coffee next day. With her. Call her. Don't be shy. Right. I'm gonna remember that. That's beautiful. Thank you. Stay in the present. Yes, absolutely. I was speaking about what I call the wellbeing program. The four tools of the wellbeing program are all tools to bring you back to the present. This is very important because we are used to be in our head and we forget to feel. Mm-hmm. That mean we don't live we only think, if you want to be living, you have to feel feeling is life thinking is dead. Preferably feel everything, every moment. If you don't feel you are a zombie, some people get lost in their head, they don't have anymore energy because if you don't tape, okay? On your feeling space, your true self, okay? The source of your life energy, after a time, you feel like a fraud? You have your good brain and your head, brain. Okay? Uhhuh, you good brain is feeling affect. Your abra is only about representation and thinking. Okay? Hmm. Very often people cut the bridge between the two because they had some difficulties. Last time I spoke about anger, yeah. About, feeling of abandonment, meaning your mother, your caregiver was not psychologically available because she was worried because she was depressed or any other reason. And you have this archaic anger. You cut the bridge so you don't feel it because the feeling of anger is unpleasant. And when you grow up, you have this monster anger and you have to keep control on the monster anger inside. Last time I spoke about how. You don't have self-confidence because you cannot trust you. You have to control yourself if you don't have self-confidence, you are not mature and you are not really an adult, even if you are 65. This is a psychological line of development, You grow when you stop thinking and begin to feel did I answer your question yes, you have. You've given me so much to think about I love what you said you grow, when you stop thinking. You begin to feel, you allow yourself to feel, feel the emotions, whatever they may be. When you begin working with them. You have to be careful. There is a difference between feeling or affect. Both are almost equivalent. But emotion is something else. Emotion, okay. Is long, and it's come very late in, the evolution. Okay? Uhhuh only the, how do you say Great. Pre mats have emotion, right? Emotion. Emotion is how to show the group what you feel. Emotion is for the society around you, you feel the emotion, but in an emotion you have more than one feeling. You have to be careful. I know that every time people speak about emotion, they ignore the feeling, they ignore the effect, the fabric of life is made of feelings, not emotion. Emotion is energetically taxing, a big, expanse of energy. Feeling you have it every, 250 milliseconds. Okay? Your feeling is what guide you in every moment in your life. Let's say for example, you open a door on a meeting where you know nobody, 250 millisecond, and you know what you think of the meeting, this knowledge, you don't even work for it. It come like this. Okay. No time instant, automatic. Yes, natural. It's a continuing processing system. That is, resuming all the stimuli coming from outside and inside. It give you in no time the situation where you are. So it come as an effect and then it blows some in the three dimension of tension, activation, and pro representation, which mean a belly, malise, or wellbeing. Mm-hmm. It tells you if your situation is good or bad. It's a question of survival. So this is the first system you have. Then you develop representation. But when you arrive, your feeling system is already at work fully. Mm-hmm. So what are you saying for us women who travel abroad and you tell us to not think so much, but to feel what?.You know, feeling can make the difference. For example, if you are a woman alone, well, Singapore, Japan, Korea, very safe, but if you go in some other country you never know. Okay? Trust your good feeling. It give you information that you don't know about. Sometime you know your good feeling in telling you something. No, don't go there. Yes. But at the same time, you had tell you, ah, you are stupid. Be brave or any stupid story? Don't make a fuss trust your good feeling. I see, I see. I get you. What would you say are some of the myths or misconceptions about adjusting to life abroad that you wish more people understood? I want to say don't try to fit. Live your life, yes, you will not want it for yourself to change yourself to fit home. But why will you try abroad? If in our societies, western societies, we have this idea that, racist is bad it's not the same if you are in other country, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, a very nationalist, mm-hmm. They accept foreigners. But you stay a foreigners. Mm-hmm. If I remember correctly, in Korea they had the tourist minister, or was who was from, German origin. 30 years later I was still the foreigner. Oh, I see. Yeah. So don't try to fit, accept the position as a foreigner. It's not bad. In fact, you know, because in some of the society, in fact all of them, the social pressure, it's very. As a foreigner, you are not submitted to this pressure. Okay? You can act which, ever way you want. They will find it, excusable because you are foreigner. Mm-hmm. When we think about fitting in, we think about being accepted. Belonging. It's not the same thing, is it? No, you belong to the company you work for. You belong to the group of friend who accept you. But. You don't belong to a foreign society. Even if you are interested. For example, I had the chance in Korea to have a lot of friends and they introduced me to a lot of the, Korean culture. Through, Buddhist group and everything, because I was interested in meditation. I had a good view on the Korean culture, but I don't belong there. I will never belong there. And they will never accept me as a Korean, they accept me as a foreign friend, and this is fine. So for me now, and people like me, women like me in the us mm-hmm. We, our feeling must be that I'm a foreign. I have moved here. Mm-hmm. Even if I become an American citizen I will not be accepted as an American citizen born here. You, you, I, I will say something, different. The US a melting pot. Yeah. The matter of people coming from all over the world. So it's easier to become an American because all American come from somewhere else. Yes. Mm-hmm. So yes, some American are there from many generation. So it's different, but there is no difference between you and the other American that maybe are American for two or three generation and American people. Accept people from abroad much easier than, for example, Korean or Japanese or Chinese. Right. When they see you, you look like any other American. There is no so much difference. If you see a Chinese in the States, you can think is American. Yes. If you see an American in China, not so much. I see what you mean. I understand. So when we think about fitting in because I, let me speak from my own experience, meeting people here as a new arrival. And getting to know them, I then get a sense whether or not I will become part of their group, sometimes it might be no, you are telling me, do not try to fit in, move along, find another group you know when I hear you, it's like an adolescent, like your daughter. There is always a cool group of children. There are other groups I don't know why people think that the cool group, you know, because the reason of the cool group could change. Before it was because it was the best students. Now it's even like, it's because they are the worst student. In any case, don't try to fit with this group, if it's not you, find people with whom you feel good. You can speak your mind. You feel free not trying to control yourself to please other people. Nothing is worse than people pleaser. Because you, you are not true. You are not yourself. And you don't want to live trying to imitate someone else. You want to be yourself. If in your environment you don't find people that with who you can be friend and have a, relationship, you know, friendly, having a coffee or a lunch from time to time. Try something else. You like to draw, go to a drawing course. You like yoga. Go to a yoga course. This is how you meet people with some interest. Oh my gosh, Dr. Veronica, a thousand thanks to you. I am still swimming in so many aha moments from our chats. The main takeaway is that you finally know and can put a name, to what you were feeling. Culture shock often hits like a wave. It brings disorientation, sensory overload, and the urge to escape. Homesickness, on the other hand, is quieter. It creeps in after the excitement fades it's when you start missing familiar foods and faces and rhythms, and I definitely, definitely had that when I moved to the USA. If today's episode resonated with you, take a moment to reflect. What are you idealizing about the place you left, and what's quietly beautiful about the place you are in now? Food for thought, huh? That's it for me today. Stay curious, stay grounded, and remember, you don't have to fit in to belong. Have a lovely day and see you on the next episode.