Have you ever noticed this contradiction in yourself? You adapt quickly, come alive in new countries, and enjoy the stress, the reinvention, the feeling of starting over.
And yet…
There is also a pull toward finding a home, to settle somewhere more permanently. You might feel restless when life becomes predictable, but uneasy when you imagine never settling anywhere.
This push–pull is incredibly common among globally mobile people. And it isn’t a flaw or a failure to “grow up.” It reflects something much deeper about how identity, loss, and attachment are shaped by moving abroad.
When “where am I?” becomes “who am I?”
Counsellors who work with expats and immigrants often describe relocation as more than a change of geography, it is also a change to the self.
When familiar streets, language, roles, and relationships disappear, the sense of who we are can begin to feel less stable. The question “Where do I belong?” slowly turns into “Who am I now?”
For many people who move repeatedly, identity becomes fragmented with different places holding different versions of the self. Over time, this can create the feeling of being spread across multiple lives, rather than living one continuous story.
Why moving can feel so alive
Moving abroad often brings a powerful sense of vitality. In new environments, we are required to be alert, flexible, and resourceful. We exercise our courage, and thrive on change. Life can feel purposeful and full of possibilities.
There is also the effect of stress in manageable doses. The early stages of moving abroad are full of structure and momentum: finding housing, learning systems, building routines. This kind of stress can feel organising and even energising.
Moving abroad can also create distance from emotional pain. It might feel as though leaving softens the impact of unresolved grief of losses, complicated family relationships, and or the shame of never quite fitting in. Without fully realizing it, geography can become a way of avoiding difficult feelings.
The losses we don’t always name
Moving abroad always involves loss in unexpected ways, even when the move was chosen. People leave behind not only countries, but also friends, familiar objects, professional identities, languages, neighbourhoods, and versions of themselves that existed only in those places.
Many migrants and expats carry well hidden shame and guilt: shame about being different, becoming dependent, about not quite fitting in in a new language, and guilt for those who we left behind. These emotions often remain unspoken, unconsciously driving decisions and existential confusion. It is not uncommon to hear people say that every move feels like “a small death.” Something ends, even as something new begins.
Why staying can feel unsettling
When life becomes stable, many highly mobile people are surprised by what surfaces. Restlessness, boredom, emotional flatness, or a vague sense of disorientation may appear. Old memories and unresolved grief can become louder. Relationships deepen and demand more emotional presence.
For someone who has learned to cope by moving, stillness can feel unsafe, not because stability is harmful, but because it removes the protective distance that change once provided.
A therapeutic perspective: relief, meaning, and choice
From a therapeutic point of view, frequent movement often provides short-term emotional relief. It restores a sense of agency, and aliveness and can temporarily reduce anxiety, grief, or confusion about identity.
Over time, however, constant relocation may also interrupt deeper needs: to be known over years, to build something that lasts, to integrate past experiences into a coherent life story.
The question is not whether moving is right or wrong. It is whether the chosen path is workable in building the life you want in the long-run, or whether the decision was driven by subconscious emotional reasons such as avoiding pain or a fear of staying.
The hidden cost: a fragmented life story
People who have lived in many places often describe their memories as scattered across countries, languages, and eras.
“I was more myself there.”
“That version of me disappeared.”
“I don’t know who I am when I’m not in transition.”
When these pieces remain disconnected, the sense of self can feel fragile or incomplete. Therapy with highly mobile expats often focuses on gently bringing these threads together, allowing past and present to sit side by side, slowly narrating identity into a coherent whole from scattered parts.
Questions worth sitting with
If this pattern feels familiar, it may help to reflect on a few deeper questions. What usually stirs inside you before you decide to leave a place? What losses from earlier moves still feel unacknowledged? What parts of you come alive when you arrive somewhere new, and which parts seem to fall silent? When you imagine staying in one place for a longer time, what emotions appear first?
These are not questions to solve quickly. They are ways of listening to the parts of yourself that were shaped by movement.
You don’t have to choose between freedom and belonging
Moving abroad and being highly mobile is not something to necessarily give up on. When feeling the tension between excitement and stability, what often helps is getting clearer about how we want to live in this one short life, and what truly matters to us.
By integrating both the pain and the gifts of being an expat or immigrant, and by building forms of continuity that travel with us, such as relationships, values, and a sense of a deeper self that remains constant, “home” can become less a physical place and more an inner feeling of coherence and stability.
How counselling can help
For many people who have lived across countries and cultures, the deepest impact of mobility is psychological. Lives become divided into chapters that belong to different places, languages, and versions of the self. Over time, this can create a sense of fragmentation as if parts of you are scattered across the world.
Counselling can offer a rare kind of space: one where all of these parts are welcome at the same time. Within a steady therapeutic relationship, you do not have to choose which version of yourself to be. You can slowly integrate the confident newcomer, the homesick child, and the adult who learned to survive through change. The relationship itself becomes a form of continuity, something stable that exists even as the rest of life may keep moving.
Therapy can also help identify and gently work with earlier attachment patterns and relocation wounds. For some people, frequent moving began in childhood. For others, the first major migration came during a vulnerable life stage. These experiences can shape how safe closeness feels, how easily bonds are formed, and how threatening putting down roots can become.
Finally, online counselling with an immigrant therapist can provide a place to mourn what is rarely fully acknowledged: the cumulative losses of each move. Naming these losses and allowing grief to have a voice can be deeply healing. What has been unspoken and carried alone becomes shared, witnessed, and more integrated into your life story.