The Corporate Talk

Feeling Lonely as an Expat: Navigating the Emotional Challenges

Living as an expatriate can be an incredibly enriching experience, offering the opportunity to immerse oneself in a new culture, language, and way of life. However, alongside the adventure and excitement, expat life can also bring about feelings of loneliness and isolation.

The distance from familiar surroundings, the absence of a strong support network, and the struggle to integrate into a new community can all contribute to the sense of loneliness that many expats encounter. These feelings are valid and experienced by countless individuals living abroad.

In this post, I’ll share personal experiences, and discuss strategies for coping with and overcoming these challenges. Whether you’re a seasoned expat or considering a move abroad, this series aims to provide insights and support for navigating the emotional ups and downs of expat life.

My first year

I would say that the first year was the most happy and tough. Happy at the first months with the whole excitement of moving to Germany and tough, when the time passes by and the difficulty to build friendship weighted.

As a Brazilian living in Germany, when I moved to a small town in 2018, I felt a mix of emotions. The town made life easy with its nice feel and easy access to shops and work, but making friends was hard. At first, I loved exploring and traveling to different cities every weekend, especially to see Bundesliga matches since I’m a big soccer fan. I was thrilled to plan these trips, from getting tickets, finding places to stay, and enjoying the local sites. It made me really happy. But as time passed, not having anyone to share these experiences with made me feel really sad. Even though I enjoyed discovering new things, being alone all the time made me feel tired and unhappy.

I clearly remember feeling very alone in my quiet apartment on Friday nights, while I saw everyone else on the streets getting ready to go out and have fun. It made me think about the happy times I used to have in Brazil, where my friends and family would do things together and enjoy each other’s company. Remembering this made me feel very sad and unsure about my new life in Germany.

The dream that inspired me to start a new life in Germany started to become uncertain, making me question the decision I had made. I was torn between the excitement of living abroad and missing the comfort of familiar relationships, which made me think deeply about how loneliness was affecting me and reconsider what I wanted in life.

The Turn

I enjoy writing, which is why I have a blog and write books. Privately, I do a lot of journaling, where I write about my thoughts, feelings, and ideas. I have many texts in my private files.

One day, as I was journaling about my sadness and loneliness and considering returning to Brazil, feeling like a failure for giving up on my lifelong dream of living in Germany, a thought came to mind: “What kind of person do I want to become in life? That will help me figure out what to do with my time.”

It was a practical thought and became clear to me, as if my mind was saying, “Carol, get out of the suffering spot! Wake up, go out, seek out people, make connections, and build friendships!”

As obvious as this thought was, it wasn’t easy to do in a small town in a culturally close country, especially since I was in the early stages of learning German.

Nevertheless, I moved forward, downloaded apps like Meetup and Internations, and started attending events, even though they were mostly in bigger cities. It was a bit stressful to travel, but it was worth it.

I even created a Meetup group called “Rock and Metal Fans Mannheim and Region” and organised meeting events in a bar in Mannheim with live bands – it was a fantastic time! I met great people who shared my music taste.

I also started going to Internations events in Frankfurt, which was an hour away from where I was living, but there I could meet expats like me. That’s when I realized I had been suffering for too long from being far away from everything.

My conclusion for you

Don’t wait too long like I did to start going out and meeting people, thank God we are in the information time, internet helps a lot! Make use of apps like I’ve mentioned and start building friendships that are in the same moment in life like you.

And I am not even talking about love-relationship apps. This also works, but if you are in a loneliness moment, prioritise to build a friendship group first, find fun things to do, search for a hobby that you enjoy and that will light you up, fortify your roots in the new country.

Love, can come and go, and when love goes away your friendship group would be there to support you. Focus on that first.

I want to hear from you