396. Homesickness

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Speaker 1: Hello everybody. I'm Jemma Spake and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments, and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we, of course break down the psychology of our twenties. Before we get into this episode, I just want to say a huge thank you for all of the support and the love and the kindness that you guys have shown the podcast and our video episodes being on Netflix. I'm want to be brutally honest and say that transition hasn't been all that easy for me emotionally and mentally, and I've definitely been experiencing a lot of self doubt, a lot of panic, a lot of anxiety, a lot of pressure in the past few months, and I feel like I have to be honest with you guys about that. As you know, the people who have been here since day one, I know it's very easy to see like big accomplishments like the one that the podcast has gone through, and especially in your twenties to think that it's all incredible and spectacular, and a large part of it has been spectacular, but it's also been very hard, and you guys have just been the silver lining and have continued to make it so special. Every time you guys tag me in your Instagram stories watching an episode on Netflix, or message me saying you've seen it, message me saying like when is it coming to my country, or you leave a comment, it is just the best feeling ever. So I just I feel like I haven't said it enough on the podcast. Thank you for making this so special for me. And if you haven't watched an episode yet on Netflix and you are in the US or Canada, you can go and search up the Psychology of your twenties right now. Hopefully it will be in many other countries soon, no promises, but fingers crossed. Without further ado, let's get into today's episode. Today, my friends, we are talking about homesickness, that deep sadness and melancholy we get from being away from home for just a bit too long. The desire to run back to where we feel the safest, the sick feeling in our stomach, the anxiety we get when the sun goes down, the only place you want to be is not where you are. That kind of homesickness, the kind that I'm sure you can all relate to that we've all experienced at some point in our twenties, at some point in our life. The best way that I've seen homesickness described is as a mini grief. Even when the reason you're away from home is a good thing, is a great thing, Even when it's because you've gone to college, or you're moving on with your life life, or you're traveling to places that you only ever dreamed about, you've moved cities for like an amazing opportunity for love, there is still this recognition that you are saying goodbye to something and a way of living and a way of existing that is really comfortable and familiar and that you love. You're grieving things maybe never being the same again. You're grieving this security, You're grieving the past, and you're missing not just the place, not just the location, but the memories. You're missing, a system, you're missing, a routine, you're missing relationships. Homesickness is so much more complicated and hard that I think a lot of people give it credit That's what makes this also emotionally painful. It is a full body experience, and today I feel like we need to just talk about it in depth. It's also strange because you also know in this period of life that you need to experience some hard emotions, homesickness being one of them, to grow. It's kind of the price you pay for getting out of your comfort zone and seeing the world. There are so many people who feel this way and who feel very frustrated, but also feel very indebted to the experience and guilty, and it can be hard to enjoy the moment that you're in and also to see clearly how life is going and what you want in the future, and whether this is the place you should be or whether you should go home. It's a very confusing emotion. Let's really dive into it today and just break down the psychology, what it is, why it is so emotionally painful, When to listen to your homesickness, but also when to not listen to it, and also my tips are the things that you could do today, the things you could do tomorrow, the things you could do this week that I can guarantee will make you feel better. So without further ado. Let's get into it. So let's begin with this. Are you feeling so homesick right now? You're feeling homesick right now because your mind and your body is programmed to avoid drastic changes and to make you very much aware that it doesn't like drastic changes when they happen, whether you like it or not. There is this fascinating study from twenty twelve looking at university students that found homesickness isn't just like a pesky, annoying feeling, It's actually a stress response. Your body, your mind, your nervous system likes certainty, likes knowing, likes safety because that is where you can flourish best. What is most known, what is most safe, What is most certain? Home, home, your routines, your childhood bedroom, the space you decompress every single night, the environment where you know exactly what to expect. That is where your body and your mind always wants you to go back to. Every single human needs some version of this. It is wired into our DNA and into our way of being to have a home base, or to have some environment or some space where we feel our safest and where we can just switch off for the day. For the month, for the hour. That is why we literally have something called place attachment theory, this idea, this idea from psychologists and scientists, that we form deep emotional bonds with places. That is something that we are hardwired to do, the same way that we form deep emotional bonds with people. And like people, certain places become part of who you are. They become part of how you see yourself. They hold really precious memories, they hold your routines, they hold your sense of safety. They also are what hold our default self, the person that we are at our core, the person we most naturally become when we feel our safest normally at home, even for nomads, right, even for people who give the impression of needing nothing. Just like the wide open space, like the wide open road, the wider open spaces are for them home. There is not a human alive that doesn't have some or need some kind of environmental or external consistency, even if that consistency is inconsistency. So when you leave those spaces and say goodbye, when you leave home, when you move city, it is like a breakup. It's like a death. Your brain has to reprogram where to go to feel safe. What we can and can't trust, what makes us feel good, what feels normal for us now whilst managing the pain and the loss and the pain of nostalgia. Nostalgia and homesickness, by the way, incredibly similar emotions. Something you may not know. The word nostalgia was initially created as a medical diagnostic term sailors who were suffering from homesickness. Literally, that is what the word for homesickness was, nostalgia. You want to know something else interesting, another interesting psychology history fact. Nostalgia is one of the most intense emotions you can experience. It's also not distinctly good or distinctly bad. But when you feel it, researchers show that you really feel it, if you know what I mean, you feel it like nothing else. And that's what you're enduring right now. Again, it's like a breakup. It's like a breakup where you idealize all the good things, you don't remember any of the bad things. Your brain has this natural positivity bias towards the past, towards home, compared to the reality of the present, which is very colorful and vivid and real that you're experiencing right now, and the rose colored glasses that we have for the past versus the accurate vision we have for the present means that the present feels a lot starker. Essentially, what this explanation basically says is that being away from your home, even for a great thing, even for a fantastic thing, is always initially going to mean that there will be a time where you don't have a strong place attachment that you can go home to immediately, and that feels really threatening to your brain. Your body is responding to that, responding to that threat, trying to process that, and it does that by activating that stress response, a stress response. Your stress response is basically just your body speeding things up internally to help you find a solution quicker, speeding up your thoughts, speeding up your nervous systems, speeding up all these things. Hence why you feel anxious, Hence why you idealize home, Hence why you may be withdrawn socially. You may want to spend more time inside. You may not be sleeping well, you may not be hungry, you may be really worried, especially social and physical withdrawal. It's interesting some researchers actually suggest this is a natural hermiting instinct. When we feel home, we're trying to it's trying to drive you to spend more time on whatever space you're in, to become more familiar with it, or to make it feel like home. That can obviously not be great if that's the only thing you do. But all of this is this reaction to stress and to not having that homeostasis, that equilibrium. The confusing thing is that you don't always feel this way straight away, right or all at once. That's because when we initially enter a new space or a new place, there is always going to be like a honeymoon or an adjustment period. Basically, there is always going to be a period where your brain is like this is really fun and still kind of thinks like, oh, we're just here temporarily, like home is still home. We'll be back there soon. And because of that unconscious belief, like you can kind of let loose and have a fantastic time, Like you're exploring, You're meeting new people, like you're trying new food. You see the Eiffel Tower, I don't know, Like you're going out all the time. You're trying on a new version of yourself, and it lulls you into like a false sense of security of like, oh, I've avoided homesickness altogether, Like I really just got into the thick of it. It's always going to come, whether it's for a minute, whether it's for a month. I found this when I moved to London. Honestly, I was so naive. All my friends were wanting me, They're like, you have to be prepared, like you think it's going to be shit at some point. And I genuinely believed that I had avoided it, Like after the first month or two, I was like, this has been easy, and only at like three months time, like I was swiftly taken out, like it came for me the way that it comes to every one of us. And the first wave of homesickness, this wave that I'm definitely experiencing right now, is often the worst because again you've been lulled into this idea that you'll fine. You've been lolled into a false sense of security by the honeymoon period, So the emotional whiplash increases the intensity of all these really hard feelings. It can also be particularly brutal because I don't know if you're a university student, if you're at college, if there are all these other people around who have made the same move as you, sometimes like they're having a great time, they look like they're adjusting fine, they look like nothing is bothering them, And you're probably thinking like, why can't I be like these people? Why am I not finding this easy? The answer isn't just you know, maybe they don't have as much to miss. It's probably because of the person you are. People who feel really deeply, people who are sensitive, people who are in touch with the world, who are empathetic, who are big feelers, who are emotional, and I say that is a positive thing, often struggle more with adjustments like this because they just feel everything on a bigger scale, including this nostalgia, including the pain of saying goodbye, including the people they miss. It also means that when the time comes, when the tide turns, when things start feeling good, you're going to feel really good. Literally, you're going to feel this better than anybody. In twenty fourteen, there was an fMRI study done on this very thing that looked at the emotional processing of people who were self reported highly sensitive people and those who were not, and the hard emotions for them definitely registered hugely and enormously, but so do the great emotions, like the happy moods showed up so much more brilliantly in their mind and as a feeling compared to those who weren't as sensitive. So that's maybe a little bit of a silver lining to look forward to. It's hard right now, but it's going to be matched with such an amazing greatness. On the other side, it's also really important not to fall too much into a comparison trap here. Just because you're experiencing this differently from somebody who moved six months before you, or somebody else in your dorm doesn't mean it's something about you that you've made a man, right. It's not because the situation isn't right for you. Every situation, every person, I guess, just adjusts at their own time and pace, And you know what, who knows those people are sometimes still in the honeymoon phase. That's why it looks like it's all working out for them. I remember when I was at college, I had this friend who for like the first two years that we were there, she was having the best time. She was like the biggest supporter of the university. She had all the merch she would wear like her a and new hoodie everywhere. She was like the life of the party. She was having such a great time. Genuinely, she could have been the school mascot. And then at like year two, she was like I miss home so much, Like I don't know if I can stay here. I genuinely was at times thinking like, oh, she's gonna She's gonna leave this person who was like the most pro who just seemed to be adjusting better than anybody. The homesickness came for her eventually, like it comes for all of us. You simply just you cannot compare apple st oranges. Your time and the time it takes you to adjust is going to be different. So now that we kind of understand why homesickness happens, because it is a stress response, because of out the sense of safety we need and the place attachment we need as humans, let's talk about when you should say like enough is enough? When do you know this isn't just homesickness, this is something else? And also how can you deal with homesickness? How can you make yourself feel better during what is a very stressful time. We'll be right back after this short break. I have to be honest, so many of my recent experiences are really informing this episode today because I've been down bad with homesickness recently. And as much as London is amazing and you can post about it and make it look amazing, like, there have definitely been times where I've genuinely thought like what am I doing here? Like why did I make such a stupid decision? I should go back to Australia. The food is better, the weather is better, the lifestyle is better, the cost of living is better, Like why did I give that up? What did I do this for? This is why everybody in the UK moves to Australia. It's better there. There have been I think definitely a lot of tears. There's been a lot of like panic, a lot of like asking my parents to send me photos of my dog, a lot of looking at apartments back in Sydney. And something me and my boyfriend have been discussing is like when when do you stop ignoring that feeling? When do you take that feeling as a sign? And I think right now we kind of know it's run of the mill home sickness. Right We've not been here for very long. It's going to run its course like any other sickness. But when do you make the call that, like, this may be something important to listen to. Here's what we decided. This is not professional psychological advice. This is just us talking about it, me sharing it with you. Obviously, make your own decision here. But I think that if it's been more than a year, and if you have given this new place a really good shot, like you have really tried, if you've made some friends, if you've established a routine, if you've gone three months without visiting home, If this is not a momentary feeling but something you feel at least once a day, intensely, and it's not getting better, even gradually, then maybe it's not homesickness. Maybe this is just not where you are meant to be, and that is a possibility within this. The thing is, I do truly believe that you can make a home wherever you are, but sometimes it's just that you don't want to. And when you've really tried, and you've really given it your all and you've given it a shot and the motivation still isn't there, then I think you're always going to be homesick. I don't know. Maybe deep down you have no desire to call this place your home. It just goes beyond this level of adjustment and of safety before you jump to that conclusion, because I think it's a very easy one to jump to if you are in the thick of things right now. I do think you owe it to yourself to commit as fully as you can for a period of time, just to avoid the what if of, like prematurely closing a door or finishing a story that is seconds away from getting good. I always say it takes three months to adjust to a new city, six months to feel okay about the decision, a year to decide whether it's the right decision long term. And I think having that equation, having that timeline, or having like maybe even more so, a deadline for when you can start reading into your homesickness, is really helpful in this situation. Like this timeline, this formula, it also matches a lot of what we know about psychological adaptation after a major life change, like moving cities, like changing jobs, going through a breakup. Whatever it may be our emotional date, it's always going to spike. If it didn't, I'd be worried. It's always going to spike. Research though from the seventies shows that around the three to six month mark is when things start to return to what they call baseline level, and that is what signals adjustment. Until then, you just have to move through this. Homesickness is like any emotion. It might feel terrible. I do also think it's trying to tell you something. It's telling you that you have a lot to be grateful for. It's also telling you that you're probably very scared, that you're very lost, you're very lonely. Addressing those feelings first and foremost, knowing that sometimes it just takes time is really where you have to begin. I think some people, and this is what I found, some people will tell you like your homesickness is lying to you, like, just don't listen to it. It's lying to you. I don't think that's true. It's not that your homesickness is lying to you. It's not that there isn't something that you really do miss and you deserve to miss. Yes, it's just that it's only telling you one story, and it's only telling you the story of what you know, the story of what feels safe, the story of how amazing your friends are, the story of how much you miss your pets, the story of your routine. It keeps telling you how wonderful that all was, because it was wonderful. What your homesickness is omitting though, or making it hard for you to see, is how wonderful things could be. And the other story, the other situation that could also be told about where you are right now, which is that things get better, which is that things are going to start to pick up, which is that in a few months you're going to start feeling more yourself, You're going to have a few more friends, and then one day you're probably gonna have one of those days where you're just like everything is amazing. Like that is the other story that you could tell yourself about the situation. Two months time, you could have the best day of your life in this new place, and you could feel just as grateful for this experience as you do for the whole that you love so much. Both stories are true, and the trick is you need to focus on both of them at the same time. This sucks right now. I loved what I had and also something I didn't even know I wanted and could love as much. It's gonna come from this. There is something amazing on the horizon. Hold both truths in either hand. Again, so much of this advice is very breakup coded. Sometimes it's nice to think that way of like you're grateful for the relationship that you had, but you know you could find better. Like it is a real psychological strategy. So to summarize that, don't let the urgency of homesickness and the urgency of your stress response convince you that you've made a mistake and that you need to remedy it immediately. Give yourself some time. Of course, if after a while you know it really isn't working, you can totally make the best decision, but just give yourself time to really commit to this and to this opportunity. I've learned so much about homesickness from all the times I've moved, So I want to give you some tips that I'm currently putting into play in my own life. Things that are like general and also things that are more actionable that you could do like today. Firstly, and I think I said this in my seven Tips for moving to a new City episode, but for the first three months, this is the biggest tip I will give you if you can avoid it, do not go home again. Keeping on this breakup metaphor, this is coming back many times. What is one of the best things that you can do after you break up with somebody in the aftermath of a breakup or a separation, go no contact and you need to go no contact with the place you miss. As hard as that is, they're not a toxic x. You probably will go back eventually, but it's important to do this to interrupt the detachment pro Otherwise, your brain is never going to fully clock into this idea that you were in a new chapter, you were in a new season. Every time you go back, there's a reinforcement loop at play. Seeing your old room, seeing your old friends, having your own routine gives you a dopamine hit, and it temporarily soothes a sense of longing, But that relief strengthens the initial craving because your self control has weakened. Neuroscience research on breaking an attachment shows that reminders of a lost attachment activate the same reward and craving systems involved in addiction. The more you go back, the harder it is to move forward, as terrible as that may sound. Secondly, I will say find your old favorites in your new place. Make a project out of thinking about all the places that you really loved from your old home and finding the next best thing or the better thing where you are nowt This was my number one priority when I moved to London. I knew I needed to find and a gym and nyil salon, a local cafe, a local library that I loved just as much as the ones that I had left with side note, this didn't go as well as I wanted it to. I found like my dream gym, honestly a gym that was better than the one I had back in Australia. I was like so excited for it, and it actually burnt down. It burnt down within like this is not this is not a made up story. I got a year long membership. It burnt down two days later. So that you can laugh. Laugh, otherwise you'll cry about this. But commit to just finding the things that you know you really need in a location in this new place, so that you have both that attachment to what you really loved and we're grateful for and also this new this new excitement for Yeah, how this is showing up in your new life Thirdly, I would say, days you are not feeling good, whether that is today, whether it is in a couple of weeks, get outside first, get outside second, come back and get cozy. Both things are equally important here. You have to find the balance. I cannot overstate the importance of keeping busy and the importance of adventure in keeping the honeymoon period and the honeymoon phase of a new place alive, and ensuring that you don't get stuck in convenient routines, not chosen routines. If you want to overcome your homesickness, you've got to treat every single day like it is your first day in this new city. You've got to play tourist. You've got to go out and do stuff. Literally, it was my twenty sixth birthday the other day, and I walked twenty six kilometers across London just for the adventure, just to keep me focused on all the new things that I am seeing, and the opportunities and just the blessing of like getting to be here right and getting to see things I may have never if I hadn't had the opportunity to do this. Equally, Equally, you need to keep showing your body and your mind, that you are safer, that you are comfortable. I see a lot of people like go all out with the adventure and then they burn out because they never spend any time at home. Your home is also important. You have to show yourself that you are comfortable here, you like it here, that this is a place that you feel safe. If you want one thing you can do today, go out in that big long walk of a new neighborhood you haven't explored yet. Give yourself like a forty dollar budget, whatever it is, and get some really cool, comforting stuff for your space. Buy nice bed sheets. I said this in my other episode on this Buy nice bed sheets, Buy a nice lamp, Buy some pictures of home, buy a cute trinket, so that this new home feels like a permanent one or feels like one that is comforting, feels like one that you want to be in. You need both things. You need the adventure, you need, the novelty you need, the newness of and the excitement of like being in a place that you know, ancestors of yours or other people that you know could only dream of. And then also making sure you have time to make your home, make your room. Make your space your safe space so that your body does have that opportunity to decompress. This next tip is going to be the one that you probably hate the most, especially if you're really close with your family, especially if you're really close with your friends. Try to only call home once or twice a week maximum. This is going to be the hardest part. But similar to the above tip, you're essentially detoxing. This isn't forever, you know, just until like the calls become more sweet and bittersweet. But it is so important, you know. I was on this Reddit page that was like homesickness and adulthood, and it was all these people giving these tips of like call home as much as possible, and like talk to your friends and your family as much as possible. It's almost like drinking alcohol when you're really sad, like it's going to make you feel really good and then it's gonna make you feel really terrible, or like eating like candy when you're really hungry, like it's the thing that you it's just there and it would just be the easiest way to satiate an urge or a need, and then you just realize it was probably a bad decision, and the reason is because it just keeps this again, it keeps this reinforcement cycle alive. Of like, when I'm feeling a bad feeling, the thing that's going to comfort me the most is home because that is better than anything I have here. And it's such a powerful urge because of course it is, but you have to deliberately try and break that if you want to be able to form a new attachment with this new city that you're in. I've been doing this as of a couple of weeks ago. It's been really hard, but it's forced me to rely on new friends in the city and my boyfriend who lives here. And also it's forced me to rely on myself and to just be like, hey, I can actually handle this. And part of homesickness again is I think, just being able to say to yourself, I can handle this, and I can do hard things. I will. Also, this is like not really a tip, it's just advice. It's a movie recommendation. Randomly watch the movie Brooklyn if you are feeling intense homesickness right now. Sometimes I think the any feeling. Sometimes I think one of the greatest things we can do is seeing somebody else's story even during that and seeing that they turned out okay. It's basically like vicarious learning or like vicarious modeling we would call it in psychology, basically seeing an example and knowing it's possible for us. But this movie is incredible. It's with Sersha roonin think. It's based in New York, based in Ireland, about this young woman who moves from Ireland to Brooklyn. I'm not going to spoil it anymore. I like that's kind of a generic migration story, but it is so profoundly beautiful. And there is this quote in it that I think is just the best quote about homesickness, which is like homesickness is like any other sickness. It's really annoying, and it makes you feel wretched when you've got it, and then pretty sooner we'll move on to somebody else and you won't be able to remember what it felt like any big emotion, you have to move through it rather than around it, and homesickness is no different. Anything you can do to feel it fully and then also know that this is just kind of part of the story and know that this is maybe just the price you pay for an incredible life and for a big life. This is the price you have to pay for a big life is missing home, missing maybe even multiple homes. Is a great mindset shift. Speaking of a mindset shift, this is the one that I will leave you with as a final thing in your hardest times. With this, in your hardest days, whether you're at college, whether you're traveling, whether you've just moved, I want you to remember that. And this is a weird thing I've noticed in my twenties. Every great thing always asks us to give up something else we truly love and think is great. There is always a trade off. Always. This new city, this new opportunity is fantastic, and it's going to be fantastic, but it's going to ask you to give up something else. You can't be too greedy with it. And the price that you are paying is homesickness, right, and it's a brutal cost. It's also temporary. And the alternative, the comparison is the person that you know from high school, the person that you know from childhood, that you know from university, who never did anything like this, and who maybe hasn't experienced the low of this feeling, but also has never experienced the high of that first day where it just suddenly feels great, or the high of meeting somebody you never would have met if you'd stayed where you were, the high of just having people over at the place that you now call home, of your parents coming to see your new life. So it's kind of this choice and this has nothing to do with homesickness and everything to do with life. If you want a big life, it comes with costs. If you want a small life, you might be more in the center of your emotional spectrum, never experiencing such terrible lows. You're also probably never going to experience such terrific high, powerful moments of just feeling really capable, feeling like you've done the thing, feeling like, God, I'm so glad I've done this. That can only come with hindsight, and it's hindsight that it's going to come to you. And I think part of this is me trying to say it to myself of like, this is high that's going to come with my move to London, but I truly believe it, and I yeah, and I just I'm excited, and that's the feeling I try and replace my anxiety with is just excitement and optimism and possibility. So if you have made it this far, good luck. I know homesickness is really really painful and really sad, and I miss my mom and I miss my dog, and I miss all my friends. So you are not in that boat alone. And I'm also really really proud of us. I'm really proud of you for doing the thing that is the hard thing, and I think you will most certainly be rewarded for that. If you have made it this far, leave a little comment down below. Where are you experiencing homesickness from? Are you in Paris? Are you in North Dakota? Are you in New Zealand? Are you in Kenya? Like I don't know, where are you listening to this episode from? I'd love to know? Make sure that you are following us on Instagram if you feel called to do so. Make sure you leave a five star review if you related to this episode, if it helped you out, and that you were following along for more advice for your twenties. If you're in the US or Canada, you can also watch this episode or all future episodes. If you don't want to rewatch this episode on Netflix, just look up the psychology. If your twenties on Netflix, you will find us. You can see our studio, you can see my face. It's a very fun experience. Thank you to our researcher Libby Colbert for her assistance with this episode. She's amazing. But until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself. We will talk very very soon.