Clinical Psychologist Navigates Emigration Challenges

According to the World Migration Report 2022, global migration numbers continue to rise year on year with some 3.60% of the world’s population now impacted (approximately 281 million people).

The reasons why people migrate are as complex as they are varied; some are motivated by opportunity, others for prospects of study or work, many seek to reunite with family, others still, and too many at that, are driven from their country under duress. Some migrations are filled with the prospect of hope, while others are filled with despair in equal measure. But whatever the reason, today, more so than ever before, does the incendiary thought “Should I emigrate?” circulate in the human psyche.

Having recently emigrated from South Africa to Portugal with my family, the topic under discussion is of particular (and on-going) relevance to me. With this two-part article, I hope first to shed some light on the question, “Why is emigration so challenging?”, drawing on what I have learned in my time as a clinical psychologist to help explain why emigration is so gruelling for humans (and our brains) to endure. In the second part, I would like to share some of my personal anecdotes that I have employed to keep me (and my family) afloat (or, rather, sane) as we continue to wade through the complexity of our “new” lives.

And they’d be right. Touted as being one of the most stressful things a person (and their family) could ever undertake, those who have managed to negotiate the emigration process intact espouse the familiar mantra, “Give yourself at least two years to settle in.” But what exactly are they referring to here, other than giving the process some sort of discrete timestamp? Two years of experiencing what, exactly? Let’s take a closer look at what this statement means, neurobiologically-speaking, and why it is so helpful to hold in mind during the migration process.

Without you necessarily being aware of it, your brain is always looking for ways to do as little as possible. The part of your brain responsible for habit formation – the basal ganglia – has as one of its goals finding ways to conserve energy. When you have performed a behavior a sufficient number of times, it will eventually become habitual (think of riding a bike, driving, or typing so dexterously on your computer’s keyboard). Once this has been achieved, your brain no longer has to exert as much energy as it once did in order to execute the behavior effectively. It can now conserve energy during the execution of the task itself (a metabolically favourable outcome) precisely because the behavior has become “automatized” (i.e., rendered unconscious).

Contrarily, tasks that require a great deal of sustained effort, although still potentially gratifying (like learning an instrument), are metabolically unfavourable, at least from your brain’s perspective. If you imagine the relatively “simple” process of making a cup of coffee, your brain likes the fact that it is able to seamlessly, and with little chance of error, do only that which it anticipates it needs to do in order to achieve its goal (i.e., preparing a cup of tasty coffee to drink). You are by now so used to making coffee that you are even able to do other things – daydream, think, or plan which email you are going to respond to first – all while you wait for the kettle to finish boiling and ready yourself to pour. This is the major advantage of automaticity – it frees up other faculties of your brain to attend to other things while simultaneously doing something else.

Imagine, however, if each time you walked into the kitchen with the intention of making a cup of coffee you forgot if the water is boiled before or after pouring? Or where the mugs are kept? Or what the difference between full cream and 2% milk is? This might sound all a bit ridiculous to consider, but that is only because you have all the while been reaping the benefits of automaticity. You have long since forgotten, for example, how challenging it was as a child learning to pour from one (heavier) utensil to another smaller one (the mug, in this instance), or how many times you spilt as you were learning this task (and how horrible it felt not being able to yet do something your big brother could do), let alone how many times you might have burnt yourself with hot water (and how painful that felt!) during the process of vicarious learning. All these steep learning curves, once completely novel and which required a great deal of mental effort to resolve, have long since been relegated to the prized position of automaticity. Now, while holding this in mind, are you able to consider that emigration is – by its very nature – an assault on one’s automaticity, because you are essentially…

The months (even years) leading up to “departure day” are enormously challenging for the central reason that they involve preparing to leave the family, friends, places, and spaces that you have grown so accustomed to. You (and your brain) know exactly how to drive your car, on the side of the road you are used to, following the familiar route that you know like the back of your hand (and which detour to take if there’s traffic) en route to visit your mom’s place for a cup of tea. Or, by way of another example, should the need ever arise, where to find your tried and tested drain cleaner at your local supermarket to unblock your kitchen sink (and who to call in if the drain cleaner isn’t effective).

The affordances of such daily familiarities, of all the processes that you’ve unconsciously come to rely on (and which have been automatized), will no longer be accessible to you in quite the same way as they once were. Giving up all this familiarity ultimately means

Emigration is a complex act that, by and large, represents a leap into the great unknown. While this prospect might excite some people more than others, following from what’s been suggested in the previous paragraphs, emigration requires having to relearn many of the things that you once took for granted being able to do (even if you don’t remember being at pains when you learnt them initially). This is particularly true if there are additional complexities involved in the process, like having to learn a new language, which only makes the learning curve that much steeper.

Consider, for example, that I will soon enough need to go to the dentist in my new country; how do I know which dentist to choose? Is one “better” than the other? Do I rely on Google, or word of mouth to aid my decision-making process? When I do go, how do I effectively discuss my needs with them? This situation is fraught with potential anxieties because my brain can no longer “rest on its laurels” if I spontaneously need the dentist. This, then, is what people mean when they say, “Give yourself two years…” It is an acknowledgement of the effortful and sometimes daunting process of having to learn how to exist in, and wade through, the ambiguity of your new surroundings. It’s being prepared to confront novel problems without having the requisite know-how at hand, and, mutatis-mutandis, being able to endure the feelings that accompany such states of helplessness until such time that one learns how to automatise these processes once again. Fundamental to this process, therefore, is the acknowledgement that

A large portion of our need’s satiation comes from the comfort and familiarity of our relationships. Until such time that the stork drops us off, people will continue to do well when they are able to access people they care about, and who, in turn, exhibit care, nurturance and interest towards them. This is certainly true for infants, who require stable bonds with familiar caregivers in the beginning of life to set their development on course, but it is also true for adults, who, having cultivated rich and diverse social bonds of their own through the years, get many of their basic needs met via these relationships.

Emigration is a major disruption to this need-providing-baseline. Even the advent of technology, which facilitates “contact” with family and friends with greater ease, there’s going to come a time when you will be required to “put yourself out there” and socialise in your new country. For people of older age, this can often be an anxiety-provoking prospect, one that they would not have experienced had they not emigrated.

These are just some of the reasons why emigration is so challenging for human beings (and their brains). For some readers the “whys” might be helpful to know, but for others, having more practical things to actually do, might prove more helpful yet. In part-2 to follow, I hope to provide you with some tips on how to ameliorate the inevitable angst that tends to accompany the emigration process. These points, subjective and non-exhaustive, are aimed at assisting those of you who find yourself on either side of the dreaded passport stamp.

Bryn O’Reilly is a South African-born clinical psychologist living in the Central Algarve, Portugal. It is from there that he runs his private practice, offering both in-person and online services. Should you wish to contact Bryn, please click here