Why do I still feel foreign after a year abroad?

Why does nobody give a clear answer about how long this lasts?

Two separate processes are under way, at two separate paces, and just one of them can be dated. Your practical know-how improves steadily and almost visibly: the local offices, the bank, the transport, the rhythm of conversation. The sense that the life is yours, and not a well-rehearsed copy of someone else’s, keeps its own time and ignores instructions.

So when people promise a year, they are usually describing the practical side while you are asking about belonging. That figure grew out of an old stage model of arrival, with a honeymoon, a crisis and a recovery. My reading of a small interview study with international students at British and Norwegian universities is that most dismissed the honeymoon idea and described their first months as the toughest¹. It is a small qualitative study, so it captures experience rather than measuring timing, but it matches what I hear most.

Why can the eighth month feel worse than the second?

The early months are crowded with tasks, and tasks give a kind of shelter.

Arriving makes demands every day: registering, finding a home, a phone contract, a desk, the route to work, a working doorbell. While that list lasts, feelings wait their turn. When it runs out, real life is meant to start, and that is often the week you notice there is nobody nearby to tell about your day.

Two things tend to land at once. Friends back home ask less about the move, since in their minds it is complete. And you start measuring your present self against the person who once had years of shared history behind every exchange. In my experience the easing is slower and messier than any tidy model allows.

What is shifting beneath the surface?

Four things move, and they move separately.

• Predictability. You stop rehearsing everyday exchanges, because you roughly know how they will go.
• Energy. An ordinary day costs less, because less of it needs translating.
• Repair. When something goes wrong you know whom to ask, a quieter form of safety than friendship.
• Belonging. The slowest of the four, and probably the one you are really asking about.

You can have three of these and still lack the fourth, and that gap convinces capable people they are failing. Being competent is not the same as belonging, and reaching competence first is ordinary, not a sign that something is wrong with you.

What if a year has gone and I still feel like a foreigner?

Then the 12 months have revealed a flaw in the yardstick, not in you. Once a date goes by and the feeling remains, most people turn the deadline into a judgement, usually a harsher one than the move deserves.

Two things often lie underneath. One is grief for what you left, which does not melt away just because your new home is a good one, and which may stay silent for a long while before it makes itself felt. The other is a question you keep shut: whether you truly want to stay. Keeping it shut may feel faithful: to your partner, to the choice you made, to the excited self who set off. It also blocks the settling, because part of you stays held back in case you leave. Opening that question does not mean leaving. In my work it more often lets someone commit to the year ahead instead of renewing their life a few months at a time.

How do I deal with culture shock, and when is waiting not enough?

Adjustment moves through engagement rather than endurance, in small and repeated doses. None of the following shortens the timeline, and none runs to a schedule.

• Choose repetition over intensity. One venue, one regular slot, a small group of familiar faces, week after week. Being recognised grows out of repetition far more than out of one great evening.
• Speak the language badly. Using the local language imperfectly in low-stakes moments does more for belonging than another course you are too tired to attend.
• Keep something entirely your own. Not your partner’s colleagues or the office social club, but something you would have chosen back home.
• Name the loss aloud. Constant comparison keeps the loss silent, and silent loss weighs a great deal by midwinter.
• Ask the stay-or-go question openly. Talk it through with the person it affects, rather than alone in the small hours.

A review of 62 studies of working adults abroad found that adjustment was linked to emotional intelligence, cultural empathy, motivation to engage across cultures and language ability, while earlier experience of living abroad added very little². Most of those studies captured a single moment and almost all involved employed expatriates, so this describes who tends to adjust rather than prescribing what you should do. It fits what I see: those who settle fastest are not the hardiest, but the ones who go on reaching out in small ways even while they feel like outsiders.

Patience is no longer enough once the low has turned flat instead of moving. If you have ignored messages for weeks, if sleep has deserted you, if alcohol is what gets you through the evenings, or if the strain has settled into the relationship that took you abroad, you are past ordinary adjustment. That deserves attention now, and online psychotherapy is a place to bring it, particularly if you keep telling yourself you ought to have got over it already.

Questions people ask

Does therapy make sense if I may not stay?

Yes, and not knowing is often the most useful thing to work on. Focused sessions on an open decision can be valuable within a short time.

Can I start therapy too early after a move?

It is never too soon, though the first weeks are often better spent finding your practical footing. If you are already struggling badly, that alone justifies starting now.

What would the first session look like?

I ask what the relocation took from you, what it brought, and how you imagined you would feel at this point. Most people go away able to describe the difficulty more clearly than before.

We moved for my partner’s job. Should we come together?

Either can work, depending on whether the strain sits mainly inside you or mainly between you. Couples work fits once resentment about the move has begun to settle into the relationship.

Can I have sessions in English from wherever I live?

Yes, I work in English and all sessions are by video, wherever you are. A free 30-minute call is a simple way to check the fit before booking.

If your new country still does not feel like home, online psychotherapy offers support while you settle, at whatever pace that takes.

Sources

1. Dailey-Strand, Collins and Callaghan. Those first few months were horrible: cross-cultural adaptation and the J-curve in the international student experience in the UK and Norway. Journal of Comparative and International Higher Education, 2021.
2. Han, Sears, Darr and Wang. Facilitating cross-cultural adaptation: a meta-analytic review of dispositional predictors of expatriate adjustment. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 2022.

How this article was written: I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. I read the draft, correct and improve it and stand behind every clinical statement. The professional and clinical judgement is mine.