Moving abroad: an experience of uprooting

“It’s a Thursday morning and I’m taking the train to Berlin. I'm used to taking trains but getting on this one has a different taste that I can't define at the moment. On the station platform, I take a look at my suitcase, the one which contains the last belongings of a now empty apartment and which will soon welcome within its four walls new memories, those of another, of someone other than me. »

Although Europe shares a common culture and heritage, crossing the borders of the countries that make it up, in order to settle there for a more or less long and determined period, upsets the psychological balance. References are disrupted and the subject is thus confronted with numerous cultural differences (rules in society, relationship to psychological and physical intimacy, distance between self and other, etc.) that he had not always anticipated.

Moving abroad is an experience of uprooting. Leaving your country means shaking up your bearings to meet the Other. The Other with a capital “A” is first of all this other than oneself beyond borders, rich in cultural differences, but it is also, sometimes, another part of oneself that we seek to meet when leaving your country of origin. Expatriation is therefore this experience beyond borders, a permanent movement, an adjustment, the constant search for a balance between one's country of origin and one's host country.

We don't all leave our country in the same way. For some, leaving means going to meet others, to meet oneself, to shake up one's bearings. For others, expatriation can be experienced as a sacrifice when leaving imposes the renunciation of a social status, of activities or structuring social relationships in the subject's life. This may be the case in particular when you decide to follow your partner in his expatriation. The time of expatriation sometimes disrupts psychological temporality and can then become synonymous with suffering. Indeed, leaving to rebuild, renouncing to create requires energy, an energy that is not always accessible. The difficulty in adapting can then lead to guilt leading to a form of isolation or even what we call “cultural burn-out”. Psychological support can help break this loneliness and think together, in a two-person conversation, about the difficulties of expatriation.