Maybe this happened to you sometime in your childhood (or to a friend): you wrote a letter to Santa and you asked for the latest toy you’d seen on TV, but then you found out that there was another present under the Christmas tree. And it was nice, it wasn’t bad… but you were waiting for your dream toy. Or maybe a friend tells you that he/she wants you to meet someone who’s a perfect match for you, and when you finally meet this person… bang! And I’m sure you’d have liked that person if you’d met him/her on your own, but you were waiting for your soul mate (or Prince Charming) and you can’t help but see all the differences. Or your partner says, “Let’s do something super special on Friday” and then, if you do the same as every Friday, that same thing that every Friday is great fun, well, maybe this time it isn’t.
The thing is that our expectations frame our reality much, much more than we realize.
And in expat life, this can play several dirty tricks on us. It can affect our ability to adapt when we first arrive. It can also affect our capacity to tolerate the inevitable frustrations that living away from “home” may cause. And, we could go on and on about situations where our having an idea of how things will turn out contributes to making it more difficult for us to cope with those experiences that don’t stick to our plans.
So far, we’ve addressed the common topic of expectations and frustration. Still we have to add another aspect that’s not usually considered: the fact that our expectations don’t always get updated. This might sound weird, I know. What I mean is that our expectations are usually created before knowing or learning about something. Our previous expectations may be, for example, about how the expatriation will go. And we rarely update them once we’re in the actual situation.
For example, R. expatriates. Moving to a new country obviously involves that he’ll have an adaptation period. He’s curious to know about this process, he googles it on the Internet and he reaches the conclusion that the cultural shock lasts 6 months. That’s it. He travels, he arrives and during those 6 months he has a high tolerance to the frustrations he experiences because, of course, he knows that’s the way it is. But then, when a year after his arrival he still can’t stand his workmates being so quiet during the “happy hour”, he’ll be surprised by this feeling. Or when he goes back to a coffee store and finds his lost backpack with all his belongings untouched, he again feels weird for being surprised at this. He thinks he should know by now that this is how things work there. Although these small examples aren’t the ones that strongly affect our moods, R. will say, “How come I just can’t adapt? These things shouldn’t surprise me any more”.
This example obviously seems small, so here there is another one, which I think perfectly illustrates the point, even though it’s not about expat life. T. lost his father. Immediately he goes through those first moments of anguish, which he doesn’t even question if they’re the right thing to experience or not. Then, he thinks of searching the Internet for it and finds that the process of grieving for a father lasts X number of years (Yes, there are people who classify everything, indeed, and this topic isn’t an exception). Time goes by but the pain doesn’t go away. T.’s been feeling sad, missing him, for much longer than he supposedly should. Clearly, the person who wrote the statistics didn’t take into account what was the bond with that specific father like, or which other grieving processes the person went through before (Believe it or not, this also has an effect), or thousands of other factors. So now T. not only misses his father and feels pain for losing him but also feels he’s flawed, that something about him isn’t quite right.
It is not like our expectations about pain will increase or diminish it but they will definitively change our “feelings toward the situation”, so to speak. And that, itself, adds a new level of complexity. This is why, in difficult or frustrating situations, which make us feel anxious or distressed, it’s best to check which our expectations about it were. Because they’re almost never harmless, believe me.
Would you like to feel at home anywhere in the world?
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Would you like to feel at home anywhere in the world?
Good news!! Your expat life can be a lot easier!!! You are just missing some key elements and this FREE eBook was written to help you with that.
