The Best Ways to Beat Homesickness While Studying Abroad
Homesickness is not a condition you can avoid without causing some irreversible negative effects now or soon in the future. As a simple definition, homesickness is emotional distress that manifests when you feel disconnected from the familiar. This includes people, places, smells, and personal routine.
When you miss somebody, someone, or something bad, your emotional stability is fragile. When you suffer and experience emotional pain, every single aspect of your life will change.
The problem is…college time isn’t really the best moment in life to feel disconnected, lonely, or anxious. If you’re already experiencing these nasty feelings and states of mind, you must deal with homesickness right away!
How to deal with homesickness effectively? You stop ignoring it. You must understand it and then deal with it. More practically?
Well, that’s what we’re discussing in today’s post. Here are the best ways to effectively deal with homesickness feelings while studying abroad.
Cut Any Feelings of Guilt
If you leave home feeling guilty of anything, you’ll increase your odds of developing homesickness while studying abroad.
Make sure that you don’t leave any open fights, ensure that your parents are at peace with your leave, ask them to support you and comfort them letting them know that you’ll be in touch, and solve any unfinished business before you go.
Keep in Close Touch with the Close Ones
How to stop feeling lonely? Well, we’re experiencing the instant communication era, a time that allows us to instantly connect and communicate with our families and friends. Facebook video calls, Skype video calls, WhatsApp calls – simple and obvious solutions.
Make a habit of keeping in touch with the “familiar” and there will be high odds of completely avoiding homesickness feelings.
Build a New Routine
The routine you had at home must be readapted to what you’re currently experiencing. Every student has different adaptation experiences, so you’ll need to find the time to plan out your new routine. Not in your head, but on a document or on a piece of paper.
Start with your “Morning Routine”. This should state the hour you wake up, what you do right after (I suggest 250ML of warmish water), whether you do some quick exercise, a pushup or two, a flex, or two, and so on and so forth.
Continue with your “Daily Habits”. What do you absolutely need to integrate into your routine? Plan it out.
As you start focusing on developing new habits and shaping your existent routine, you’ll gain momentum and control over your life and actions. That will give you a huge mental boost and you’ll be experiencing positivity, optimism, and satisfaction. Homesickness can be totally countered by higher frequency feelings as such!
Reduce Stress in Any Way You Can
Academic years can be very stressful. When you’re facing a lot of assignments, deadlines, and expectations from both teachers and parents, your feelings of homesickness may intensify. Stress causes anxiety, and anxiety slowly leads to depression. That’s not a road you want to take.
What I always suggest students is to leverage all the available resources to reduce their main stress. If an “impossible” homework makes you terribly stressed and anxious, simply get online assignment help and allow a person (like me) help you eliminate your worries. Lots of students use this type of services, mostly because they’re considered “affordable lifesavers”.
Focus on the Reason Why You’re Studying Abroad
If you find yourself doubting yourself and your past choices, blaming the fact that you’ve left and now you feel worse than ever, stop for a second and ask yourself “why?”
Why did you choose to become a doctor? Why did you want to go to a different country? Why are you still pursuing this?
If you’re truly honest while introspecting, you’ll basically reach the roots and causes of everything you do. You just have to dig deep and focus on the “why”. Disconnect from everything while you do this and treat it like meditation.
Taking a journey within is always beneficial in figuring out the source of our hurtful emotions. Homesickness can be understood and embraced rather than ignored.
Hustle and Evolve
Want to beat homesickness? Shift your perspective and attitude. Right now. It’s possible. Stop being a victim and start being the hero. Start fresh. Ditch everything that has happened in the past and be very suspicious of every thought, emotion, memory, and belief that you had – they may all be corrupted.
Hustle and evolve. The more you grow the more you understand. If homesickness affects you terribly, that means you need to improve your emotional intelligence. Read. Study. Grow. If you want, then you can.
Takeaways
Life brings good and bad, joy and sorrow, love and hate, and a lot of diversity. Homesickness helps you evolve as an individual by putting you in difficult stances that must be faced straight on.
It also helps you understand the value and meaning of your homeplace, family, and close friends. Do not ignore it. Use the explained tips and tricks and be done with homesickness once and for all.
BIO: Alvin Franklin is a young psychology teacher that focuses on teenage psychological development problems. He’s currently studying the behavior of more than 1000 students to understand their biggest emotional setbacks caused by feelings of homesickness, isolation, or depression. Personally, he enjoys watching documentaries and reading history books.
Sources: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/312084766/homesick
