Fri, 19 March 2010
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The psychological effects of global mobility can be physically painful. We report on why expats are urged to undergo a radical overhaul of their personalities to flourish in an overseas assignment.The feeling snuck up on Marc. First, he felt restless and uneasy outside of work hours. Then he became anxious and could not sleep.
When he started to get palpitations, he consulted his doctor who told him his heart was fine. That was when he decided to see a psychologist.
Like so many other high-achieving expatriate executives based in Beijing, China, Marc found his way to my consulting room.
"I know I probably work too much," he said, "but how can I control work when the political issues are so intense and business opportunities emerge virtually overnight. How can I rest? I feel as though if I stop working even for a moment, I'll let it all go."
After working for 15 years as a psychologist practising in international communities, I believe that the expatriate life is more than difficult. Almost every day I see people break down with depression as a result of the stress and challenges of the international lifestyle.
An expatriate may be hit by a feeling of 'emptiness' right between the eyes, and it will have very physical effects. The symptoms that I see include restlessness, fatigue, lowered physical immunity and bodily pains.
Transformation in a new environment
Anna, struggling with anxiety, described her life as "full of insecurities".
"As soon as you find a successful approach, the next minute things have changed," she said. "Your good habits break down too often. You have to be creative to twist that into being your force."
Anna understood that there was an element of transformation in learning to survive in a new environment. If you take a bird away from its environment it might die, but for better or worse, a human being has an incredible ability to change.
When my fellow countrywoman, Karen Blixen, took her first steps into Africa, she found it to be a liberating experience.
"I was dizzy," she wrote. "It was dangerous, but it was intoxicating, a superb feeling. Only one step further in that direction, I thought, and I will be face to face with God."
There are few psychologists living and working outside their native cultures, and little work has been done to understand how to thrive in an international environment.
There is help available for those trying to learn how to cope with change and acceptance.
We, at Myrina, are in a unique position that provides us the ability to meet your needs, no matter where you are.
We are an international group of behavioral scientists who specialize in addictions, life skills, traumatic stress, LGBT, veterans issues, management, and Leadership both on-line and on-land.
All of our counselors are trained and licensed within their profession and our current counselors are American, Argentinean, British, Lebanese, and Turkish who speak Arabic, English, French, German, Lebanese, Spanish, and Turkish as native languages.
www.myrinaconsulting.com
The issue of helping someone with transition issues is very complex. It requires that the therapist, counselor or coach has gone through the experience of losing roots in the native cultural environment; adapting and developing a new self that is a cross-cultural self in the new environment, and knowing that this process can never be reversed and makes of the person a mutant.
I visited the web above and it surprised me the lack of mention of the whole transcultural process experience, the emerge of a new bi-cultural person, the presence of \"Third Culture children\", etc.
What we are talking here is the unique experience of transculturation, creation of a new \"above-cultures\" personality and the ability to cross-compare cultures in their particular aspects and selecting the aspects of each which can help with the transition and move the hybrid person beyond nostalgia and into real, truly internationalist mindset.
All the particular pathologies like alcoholism, other addictions, stress and the particular alienation experience of the true nomad have to be considered in the frame of the cultural frame shifting and the identity transformation that makes the hybrid not a perfect immigrant into the actual country she lives in (never completely possible), but a person ready to thrive from the next move to a different country....
This handy guide from Expertise in Labour Mobility includes how to write a CV, application procedure, interview dos and don'ts, Belgian management culture.
Belgium’s first alternative directory assistance services - available through the shortcode 14-14 - can now be accessed on the internet.
Moving to Belgium presents a host of challenges to expats, not least of all finding the right home.
The psychological effects of global mobility can be physically painful.
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