The Expat Life: Love (Or Hate) At First Sight

Posted on 06. Jan, 2009 by Emmanuelle Archer in Blog, Expat Life, Home, Relocation, Reviews, Tools & Resources
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Funny how your perception of a new place can be forever coloured, for better or worse, by your early impressions.

For me, the decisive factor is often the quality of my interactions with local people. After just a few days in Vancouver, I knew that I would be happy living here. Everyone was surprisingly welcoming and helpful, from the immigration officer who greeted me with a big “Welcome to Canada” and sounded like he really meant it, to my next-door neighbours who insisted on having me over for Christmas dinner very shortly after I moved in.

I could hardly believe it, especially considering that I had just moved from Paris where there is quite a bit more, ahem, protocol and reluctance to approach strangers. So on went the rose-tinted glasses and I set out to discover what other pleasant surprises the city held. Call me a Polyanna if you must, but I am sure that it helped me make new friends quickly. After all, a smile is more attractive than a scowl, isn’t it? Naturally, this only led to more “Wow, people are really friendly here!” and “What a nice place to live!”

Unfortunately, self-fulfilling prophecies also work the other way around.
If you spent your first six weeks trying in vain to reach particularly inefficient utility companies, you may be dreading what the next three years are going to be like. If your new home is broken into within days of your moving in, you may start seeing your new country through the prism of fear and distrust, which will compromise your long-term enjoyment of living there.

If this is your case and you wish you were thousands of miles away from your current location, how can you make things better? Here is a suggestion, broken down into four steps:

1. Allow yourself to be upset. Acknowledge the fact that you are furious, shocked, on the verge of tears… whatever emotion is present, allow it to be there. You may have noticed that I am not a fan of “Shoulds”- as in “I should be able to handle this better” or “I should not be this angry”. Please do not beat yourself up for feeling what you are feeling.

2. Dig a little deeper. Are you furious because you fell prey to a scam and now feel that you cannot trust anyone? Are you shocked because you witnessed something incomprehensible or incompatible with your own values? Are you on the verge on tears because you feel completely overwhelmed and do not know who to ask for help? You get the idea. Try and see what lies underneath the main emotion you are experiencing.

3. What would be most helpful right now? This is not about looking for quick fixes. It is about giving your emotions what they need most, so that they can dissipate or at least become more manageable. If you are experiencing distrust, you may need reassurance. If you are struggling to understand something, you need an explanation or some way to make sense of it. If you are feeling overwhelmed, you may need support, clarity and simplification.
What small, practical steps could you take toward helping your emotions dissolve?

4. Keep separate things separate. Hopefully the simple steps above have helped you distance yourself a little from your raw emotions. From this vantage point, try (I am not saying this is easy!) to keep in mind that these emotions are temporary. The negative experiences you had were isolated events. They do not get to have a say in everything you do, nor do they get to define all your interactions with the country.

In other words, if the cable company kept you on hold for two hours before hanging up on you, your anger does not get to seep into the non-cable company-related areas of your life. It does not get to tell you: “Oh, the nerve! What kind of place is this? What are we doing here? I am feeling terribly resentful and I sure hope you do too- so please do NOT enjoy the local food while you are out tonight and do NOT say hello to the neighbours if you run into them, because remember, you are really angry and besides- these cable people, what idiots!!!”

Yes, in my view, anger is a little petulant, not to mention long-winded, but you see what I am getting at: it makes absolutely no sense to miss out on enjoying delicious food or a friendly chat with your new neighbours just because your anger wants to follow you everywhere, like a black cloud over a cartoon character’s head. If at all possible, leave it at home and enjoy yourself instead.

I wanted to add a little anecdote to end on a lighter note, but this is getting quite long already. So I will tell you my story illustrating all of this in the next post. If you do not want to miss it, remember that you can subscribe and receive new content as I post it, either by email or via the RSS feed. (← now was that a smooth transition, or what?)

Emmanuelle