A Question of Identity

Posted on May 1, 2012 by thesmartexpat

How has relocation challenged your identity? (Photo: istockphoto.com)

Its been a busy month and I’m afraid my already erratic blogging schedule has suffered.  I’ll be writing about some of the things that I’ve been working on over the coming weeks but today I’m going to talk about identity which is the topic for Friday’s Expat Partner Online Coffee.

When the psychologist Erik Erikson coined the term “identity crisis”  in 1970, he was talking about the process of identity formation as experienced by adolescents.  Erikson spoke of an idenitiy of sameness and continuity, a relatively static concept.  However, those of us who move overseas know that moving to a new country can challenge our identity, our sense of self, on many levels.  We often start to appreciate as we become accustomed to living overseas, that the experience has, on some level, changed us fundamentally.  Looking at my own experiences, here are some of the ways that they have changed me:

1. When I first moved, my cultural identity was very much tied into my national identity.  While I still identify myself as Scottish, my views are more multi-cultural.  I understand the relativism of cultural perspectives and am not only more tolerant of cultural mores which are not my own but have adopted some which are definitely not those I grew up with.

2. Re-learning how to do simple daily tasks in several new countries where I don’t know the language has challenged my sense of self  as a competent and confident person (though this is usually only temporary).  On the positive side, I’m a person who can organise and execute and international relocation in 6 weeks and I can get things done in unfamiliar places.

3. Relinquishing my career to stay at home with the children has been a huge shift in identity.  I’m part of a generation of women who expected to have careers and continue them when we had our families – we actively rejected the 1950s/1960s ideal of a mother who stayed at home with the children.  Like many women, my identity was deeply entwined with what I did. So when I stopped working because moving internationally, maintaining a career and having young children seemed impossible, well, let’s just say it was definitely (maybe on some level still is) an identity CRISIS!

4. My foreign language capabilities in school were not that great.  I never thought of myself as a linguist.  In the last 15 years, I’ve learned to function in 4 languages besides my mother tongue.

5. Like women around the world, whether they’ve moved or not, being a mother has become a key part of my identity.   On some days that’s a good thing, on others not so much, but it’s part of me that is not going to change.

6. I’m an introvert by nature; happy in my own company, but moving around, making new friends and becoming part of new communities has made me step out of my introvert’s shell and take on some more extrovert characteristics.

Those are just some aspects of my identity that have changed but other things about me remain relatively unchanged; my fundamental values, I’m still an introvert at heart, there is still a core of me which is (for better or worse) tied up in having grown up in a very small community.

What challenged your identity when you moved overseas?

What aspects of yourself have remained unchanged?

How has living in a different culture and forming new social groups changed you?

Louise Wiles, Judy Rickatson and I will be discussing these and other questions when we talk about the “Impact of Relocation on Identiy and Sense of Self ” at the Expat Partner Online Coffee this Friday May 4th at 13:00 London/08:00 New York/20:00 Hong Kong  (if you’re not sure about the time in your own location check here ‘http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html).  Join us by clicking on this link https://www.linqto.com/rooms/thesmartexpatlive

We’ll continue the discussion on the Expat Partner Online Coffee Facebook Group (its a closed group, so you’ll have to ask to join).   Join us for what promises to be a lively discussion.

Filed under: Accompanying Partners, Coaching, Expat Culture, Identity, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | 5 Comments »

Climb Every Mountain

Posted on October 20, 2011 by thesmartexpat

Life in a new country challeges each individual in different ways.  Some people experience difficulty adapting to the new culture while others adapt seamlessly.  While some find languages a breeze and are chatting like locals in no time at all, others live in a fog of incomprehension for months or even years.  Still more are inhibited from making friends by shyness or lack of confidence yet their outgoing counterparts seem to know so many people and be included in so many things that if you didn’t know better you’d think they’d been around for years.

What aspect of living in a new country was most challenging?

How did you overcome the challenge?

What parts of life as an expat were easy for you to adapt to?

Share your answers in the comments below.  I’ve also started conversations on Facebook and Twitter so have a look over there for more answers.

Filed under: Accompanying Partners, Career, Expat Culture, Settling In, The Expat Experience | 9 Comments »

Comfort Zone – Part II

Posted on October 12, 2011 by thesmartexpat

In March, I wrote about moving overseas and what makes those of us who do so step so far out of our comfort zones. As many of you who have moved overseas this summer have probably discovered, the decision to move to a new country is just the first of many times in your expat life that you step outside your comfort zone.  At the moment you may be feeling that every time you step outside your door you’re stepping outside your comfort zone.  Simple things you take for granted in your home country may be feeling overwhelming.  Language can make a simple trip to the grocery store or a phone call seem challenging.  Cultural differences mean that everyday tasks are done differently and you don’t know where to begin.  You may be uncomfortable making small talk with new people but none of your friends and family are around.  By now, the initial excitement of living in a new country is probably wearing off leaving behind the reality of living your life in a country where nothing is familiar.  This is the time when many new expats (I include myself in this group) find themselves in tears in the middle of a metro station because some minor mistake or mishap is the last in a long list of tasks that haven’t gone quite the way they expected.

So how do you motivate yourself to keep moving forward with all the things you need to get done, when pretty much everything you feels difficult?

1. Team up with someone else who’s new.  You may not offer each other much in the way of help but you’ll be experiencing the similar things at similar times.  You’ll be able to cry on each others shoulders and maybe one day soon (I know it can be hard to imagine), laugh about your mistakes.

2. Don’t be shy about asking people who have lived in your community for a while for help to get things done.  You don’t have to learn everything the hard way – every expat has been where you are now and most are happy to pass on their knowledge and experience.

3. Give yourself goals for accomplishing the tasks which are outside your comfort zone.  Continually putting yourself in the situation of feeling helpless because you’re struggling to accomplish tasks that you could do with your eyes shut in your home country can be soul destroying.  Give yourself a goal to accomplish each day based on how ready you feel to take on the challenges.

4. Acknowledge your achievements.  It can be easy to look back and minimize what you have done because you’re measuring it against the benchmark of how easy it would be in your home country.  Recognise the challenges that make the task more difficult in your new country and celebrate overcoming them.

5. Enlist the support of your partner and help him or her to understand the challenges of the things you are doing so that he/she acknowledges the achievement too.  The last thing you want to see after telling your war story of how you negotiated the local systems to pick up your residence permit at the town office is that look that says “So what’s the big deal about that”

Be kind to yourself and, over time, you’ll find that all the things you found difficult at first become as familiar and simple as they were in your home country.

Don’t get too comfy though.  Once you’ve got the basics ticking along, part of the richness of living in another country and culture is to keep experiencing it on new levels and to do that you might find yourself once again stepping outside your comfort zone.

Filed under: Accompanying Partners, Expat Culture, Philanthropy, Settling In, The Expat Experience | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Pay it Forward

Posted on September 8, 2010 by thesmartexpat

After a break from blogging over the summer, during which I had the immense pleasure of presenting the  Expat Summer Seminar Series with the wonderful Career Options Coach Jennifer Bradley, I’m back!   As well as the summer seminar series (more about it in later posts), I’ve had a typically expat summer of visitors, travel to see friends and family, vacation and most of all, lots of packing and unpacking.

Now I’m back in Belgium and have been helping a friend who has just arrived to get settled in.  As she is going about establishing her household and routine, she has asked me a host of questions from the important “Can you recommend a good doctor?” to the mundane “Where can I buy dishwasher salt?”   My friend is new to expat life and used to knowing how to get things done in her home country.   She feels bad for asking so many questions  and apologises frequently for it.

As a coach and as an expat,  I often encounter people reluctant to ask for help because they feel that they should be able to know everything/do everything themselves (I should confess that this is also a personal tendency that I work to overcome) and that they are somehow inadequate if they can’t work it out for themselves.  However,  if you’ve just moved to a new life in a new home in a new country, your “to do list” probably has a word count comparable to that of “War and Peace”.  You probably could work everything out yourself but it would take a long time and you’d make a lot of mistakes.  Asking questions is not a sign of inadequacy, its an efficient way of getting through your to do list so that you can get on with the business of living your life.

Moveover you shouldn’t feel that you are wasting the time of the people of whom you are asking the questions.  Every expat was once a new expat and we have all benefited from the experience of someone who has been there for a while and who is happy to share their wisdom.   Personally, and I suspect many other expats share my sentiment, I have never really felt that I am able to return those favours.  Yes, I’ve invited people who have helped me to lunch or dinner, but I know that my expression of thanks has nowhere near the impact that the help I’ve received has had on my new life.  So I, like many expats and I’m sure my friend in her turn, pay it forward and help out new people where I can.   And after six international moves, I’ve still got a lot of paying forward to do.

Filed under: Coaching, Expat Culture, Life Coaching, Settling In, The Expat Experience | 6 Comments »

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