Why You Might Want to Start Therapy After Your Study Abroad Semester
Setting foot back on your college campus after being away studying abroad can bring up a lot of feelings. Whether or not you had the time of your life or you didn’t like it as much as you thought, was three weeks long or six months long, you went alone or you went with friends, returning sometimes brings up a bigger range of emotions that you might have felt when you were leaving.
Now that you’ve returned, you might..
Feel a lot of longing
Experience your home no longer feeling like your home
Notice sensory differences that didn’t occupy your thoughts before
Feel guilty for not missing your college town more, or guilty for being away
Want to share but feel like you don’t want to burden your friends or brag
Be confused about where you fit in now
Miss the quality of life you had
Want to prioritize getting involved in international student organizations or expand your cultural activities but feel awkward or unsure
Not know how to integrate what you experienced with your day-to-day life now
Feel more connected to your study abroad friends than your hometown friends
Be daydreaming about changing your life (taking a gap year to travel, moving abroad, changing majors, transferring schools)
There are so many appropriate, valid, understandable, and justifiable emotions, thoughts, and behavioral changes that come up once you return from studying abroad.
And sometimes the people who you usually go to for support may suddenly not understand what you’re feeling or know how to relate to you or may not have been supportive of you going in the first place.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be feeling, thinking, or experiencing the things you are. Nor does it mean that there shouldn’t be space for processing them even further or more in depth than you can in your own brain or in your journal.
If you want to schedule a free 15-minute consult with a therapist who ‘gets’ it - no minimizing, dismissing, judging, or making fun - (aka a therapist who studied abroad in undergrad, did a PhD abroad, and digital nomaded), please fill out the form on the bottom of the front page!