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MENTAL HEALTH
255
June15
By Verne Maree
H
ere you are, perhaps having got just what
you wanted: an exciting new adventure.
You’ve risen from out of your rut and
moved to the city with one of the highest
per-capita income levels in the world, where there’s
an endless summer, and two new restaurants open
every day
! How could anyone be anything but
happy in this brave new world?
Even if it wasn’t easy leaving friends and family
behind – elderly parents, especially – you made the
right choice, didn’t you? Career prospects seemed
so rosy, tax rates so low; you’d have affordable
home help – maybe even try for another baby.
Wouldn’t your family benefit frommind-broadening
exposure to different cultures and languages? And
in due course, other opportunities, other cities
might beckon. In time, you’d all become wise and
successful global citizens, and the world would
be your oyster.
Though there
are
plenty of success stories and a
rainbow of happy endings, it’s not always an easy
journey. They may not tell you, and you may not always
see it, many of us are suffering from disappointment,
insecurity, loneliness, fear, depression and more, just
like the rest of humanity.
In talking with hundreds of EL readers over the past
10 years, I can truly say that no two have the same story
with similar problems. There are common elements,
however, that can be extrapolated to a whole range
of situations.
So I asked three psychologists and a life coach what
their advice would be to the unhappy expats caught
up in the following four fictional but only-too-common
scenarios: firstly Florence, a lonely executive; secondly
Hilde, who suddenly finds she’s a dependant without
a career; thirdly Malcolm and Susie, a couple whose
relationship is under strain; and finally13-year-old Jake,
who’s desperately missing his friends and his dog.