PSYCHOLOGICAL DISCOMFORTS RELATED TO EMIGRATION PROCESSES
In my practice I often confront myself with identity issues relating to emigration.
Leaving one's home country to emigrate in a new country, temporarily or permanently, inevitably leads us to experience limitations, personal resources and psychophysical conditions which we often had no experience with.
There can be many reasons to move to another country.
Many people decide to continue to deepen their studies in a more international environment and to experience autonomy and independence. We move for work opportunities, to follow your loved one, to enrich and improve your own life experience, also, unfortunately, to survive and reach a less hostile world that gives one prospect of a dignified life.
Main street and side streets, Paul Klee
Our journey and our stay can be esperienced with enthusiasm and become one optimal existential condition, can represent an extremely positive experience of carrying out a transformation.
Can also be a source of difficulties and sufferings. It is also possible to experience both feelings at the same time.
The welcome and acceptance of these conflicting and ambivalent experiences can be the beginning of making contact with the new reality and it is sometimes a necessary phase to find our place.
The sociocultural models are the basis of the Identity.
It is precisely the sense of our identity that can be tested in moving to another country.
The experience of emigration includes leaving: ones land, the places, the significant relationships family, professional identity. It also includes the encounter/confrontation with the new cultural reality that we must understand and gradually be able to integrate into our experience.
Separation from something known, reliable and predictable is a separation from parts of oneself, parts of our identity that give a meaning to our existence.
Therefore we can initially experience temporary or constant phases of psychophysical disorientation often experienced as: demotivation, weakness, strong nostalgy and sense of loss.
These uncomfortable conditions are not destined to last forever, they often improve with time and experience, gradually it is possible to start building new supports and reference points.
In other cases it may be useful to contact a professional.
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Senecio, Paul Klee
The experiences that I listen to as psychologist are often related to the feeling to have two differents lives: a former one in our own country and the new one in the new country.
This experience can be hard work and the risk is living the present as a function of the past, a past were everything was more authentic than now. That can lead to a feeling of inadequacy and frustration that may evolve in relationship issues with the partner, the family, friends and at work.
In this condition we may feel: anger, anxiety, depression, sense of isolation, sense of personal devaluation.
It is a condition that cannot remains long because it creates effort, fatigue and suffering.
HOW CAN I HELP YOU?
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A psychological support work may favor, as a first step, the recognition and the acceptance of conflicts and ambivalent feelings and the possibility to be able to integrate them.
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Subsequently we can dedicate ourselves to reinforce and to build your own resources, to the discovery of curious and strong parts of oneself, to change the point of view, we can orient ourselves to create new habits, to rediscover contexts of pleasure and a social network that provides hospitality, lightheartedness, sharing and listening.
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Over the time it can be possible to acquired flexibility and other points of support.
It is possible to find new blooms of ourselves from an existential and professional point of view.
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We can arrange an appointment to talk about it together.