Tag: self-care

Adjusting Expectations When Living in Abroad

Over our lives, we develop expectations for how our needs will be met based on the culture(s) we live in. This includes our physical needs but also our emotional needs, social needs, and all our other needs. There’s nothing wrong with this; expectations help keep us sane and allow us to determine how to make choices in our daily lives. 

However, in new cultures, these expectations tend to break down. The most difficult yet most important aspect of long term cross-cultural adjustment is to learn how to develop new expectations and use those to determine how to meet our needs. 

Every culture can meet people’s needs. If it did not, people would not survive there. But a new culture may have vastly different methods or tools to meet those needs. In another culture, you must learn how their ways of doing things can and do meet people’s needs in life. And you must not only understand this consciously but internalize subconsciously. 

Internalizing that is not always easy, and it’s okay if it takes time. All humans have built a set of expectations over the course of their lives based on how we are used to things happening. This helps produce the (generally subconscious) filters we use to assess the world around us: to determine, for example, what people mean when they communicate things, what they want from us, whether we are safe or secure, and what to expect from another in any given interaction. Without these things, we couldn’t function or handle daily interactions. 

But in a new culture, all of this has to be rebuilt. It’s easier said than done, but much of the difficulties one feels in another culture – including culture shock, frustration or anger at local practices, sadness, etc. – deep down stem from the difficulty of experiencing a mismatch from your expectations and subconsciously sensing that you will fail to have your needs met. If so, it’s okay to pause and know that you are doing a complex psychological reset.

 Listening to Your Inner 5-Year Old

Too many adults think that being a healthy, functioning adult requires suppressing their inner child. Our inner child is trying to find a state in which our needs are met, and we should be attune to the child within us and learn from him or her.

This is particularly important when your inner child is throwing a tantrum. Instead of just saying, “No, these feelings are bad; I need to move on from them,” pausing and determining why our inner child is upset may be more beneficial. What need does he or she feel is not being met? Learning about that needs tells you something about yourself and how you are relating to the world around you.

As an adult, you have more tools to decide the best way to meet that need. Needs are very rarely invalid, though, so usually there is a grain of truth to what your inner child is screaming.

Maybe there is a more productive way to meet your needs. To meet their need for attention, little children, for example, may scream and shout in a tantrum, but your adult self may know better, more productive ways to develop relationships that meet one’s need for attention and love. At the same time, as an adult, you can better understand and evaluate why you have a need for attention in the first place: what may be lurking underneath that in your psyche like a loved one you felt betrayed you or whose affections were insincere. From that, you can find a way to work on the root cause at the source.

Little children usually have not developed the ability to do any of this work, but your adult self has more tools to analyze the situation and come out with an appropriate, life-affirming strategy for how to meet your needs. Your adult self also has more tools to advocate for your needs in the world, whether that be constructive conversations with those around you about how you feel or moving into environments that might better meet your needs.

Like a canary in the coal mine, though, your inner child will tell you quickly and persistently that you seem to have an unmet need, often before your adult self realizes it. The two can work together then. Your child to alert you to your unmet needs, and your adult self to diagnose why and come up with an effective way to meet them.