What type of Expat Are you? Why you Expatriated Matters for your Mental Health
- Katie Grigoratou
- 6 days ago
- 4 min read
When people hear the word expat, they often picture one broad category. In reality, the reason you moved abroad deeply shapes your emotional experience. While many expats struggle with loneliness, identity shifts, or the stress of starting over, these experiences vary widely. Understanding why you relocated is key to developing self-awareness and compassion.
This article focuses on voluntary expatriation—moving abroad for work, love, adventure, or education. To explore this, I’ll use Peseschkian’s Balance Model, a Positive Psychotherapy framework that helps explain expat mental health during international relocation.
The Balance Model: A Framework for Expat Mental Health
Positive Psychotherapy maintains that for optimum mental health, the four areas of life must be reasonably balanced. The four areas of life are: The Body / Health, Work/Achievement, Relationships / Social Network, and Future / Meaning.
In general, these four life areas are rarely perfectly balanced, but the more “energy” one spends in one of these areas, the more the other areas are neglected. Expat life disrupts these areas dramatically. Moving abroad requires physical, emotional, and practical resources, and your reason for expatriating tends to pull your focus strongly toward one area.
Below are four common types of expats, how each relates to the Balance Model, and what challenges can arise from cross-cultural adjustment.
1. The Work / Career Expat
Moved abroad for work opportunities, promotions, or better professional and academic conditions.
Life area: Work/Achievement
Career-driven expats often center their lives on work, which can lead to burnout, stress, and neglect of other important areas.
Common challenges:
Increased stress and burnout
Overworking and loss of work-life balance
Loss of meaning or purpose
Isolation or relationship strain
Feelings of powerlessness, e.g. you feel obligated and dependent on your employer
How to manage the imbalance
Set boundaries: Notice why you overwork—fear, pressure, or lack of a social life.
Reflect on life goals: Is this lifestyle or job aligned with what you want long-term?
Support your health: Sleep, exercise, and nutrition are often neglected during long working hours. Rebalance them intentionally.
2. The “Love Migrant” or Relationship Expat
Moved abroad to be with a partner or spouse of another nationality.
Life area: Relationships
Relationship expats often feel they have “left their whole life behind.” The relationship becomes central, sometimes at the expense of identity, independence, and social connection.
Common challenges:
Loss of identity - overfocus on “us”
Loss of independence or professional identity
Conflict rooted in cultural differences and communication styles
Overdependence on partner for social and emotional support
Sometimes dependent on partner for financial resources and difficulty standing on their own feet
Loneliness and difficulty rebuilding a social network
How to manage the imbalance
Build a life outside the relationship—friends, work, activities.
Maintain hobbies, roots, and parts of yourself that existed before the move.
Communicate openly and avoid blame.
Integrate gradually: learning the language and engaging locally helps.
The partner should acknowledge the challenges and offer support.
3. The Adventure / Escape Expat
Moved abroad for the experience, adventure, or to get distance from family, old patterns, or a painful environment.
Life Area: Future / Meaning
Adventure expats often value freedom and newness. Some are consciously or unconsciously escaping stress, family dynamics, or emotional pain. These patterns tend to surface again once the novelty fades.
Common challenges:
Feeling lost after the excitement diminishes
Confusion about long-term direction
Re-emergence of childhood wounds
Difficulty establishing roots
Trouble forming long-term connections
Loss of identity and struggling to commit to one place or identity
Missing the feeling of community, family, closeness
Idealizing home when homesick where pernicious patterns re-emerge
How to manage the imbalance
Identify whether travel is adventure or escape. If it’s escape, it’s important to work on what one is escaping from. Living abroad doesn’t erase old patterns — it often intensifies them.
Find an anchor that you can reach from everywhere, whether this is family or friends at home. Keep in touch with people that know you and you can be yourself
While difficult, it’s important to try and set a long-term goal; something that one can fall back on when feeling lost. E.g. settling somewhere or finishing a degree
Social networks are important, try to find a group to belong to, likeminded friends, and keep these connections alive.
4. The Academic or Student Expat
Moved abroad for university, a Master’s degree, PhD, or specialized training.
Life Area: Work / Achievement
Student expats are often young, handling academic pressure and adult responsibilities simultaneously, sometimes without previous experience living alone.
Common challenges:
Intense pressure to perform academically
Homesickness and identity confusion
Uncertainty about the future
Isolation and loneliness
Lack of routine or structure
Feeling “too young to cope with this alone”
Exhaustion and loss of motivation
Unhealthy coping strategies (alcohol or drug use, disrupted sleep routines)
How to manage the imbalance
Stay anchored to home by frequent visits and calls but don’t rely on it solely.
Build a social circle among classmates or other international students.
Join clubs, sports, or activities to maintain movement and social contact.
Strive for activities that promote stress relief: walking, doing sports or yoga, saunas or swimming.
Create routines and structure: this will give you a sense of grounding and anchor you with your identity and sense of self.
Seek student counseling—services are often free and very helpful.
Why Understanding Your “Expat Type” Matters
Knowing why you moved abroad helps you understand:
your emotional reactions
your loneliness
your stress levels
your expectations of yourself
your identity shifts
your relationship patterns
There is nothing wrong with struggling abroad. Expat life is transformative, but it also disrupts every part of your internal system. Understanding how your specific expat story affects your mental health is an important part of adjusting and thriving.
If you feel you cannot cope, then maybe therapy will be of help. Therapy for expats isn’t just about “adjusting to a new country.” It’s about understanding the deeper internal story that brought you there and how it specifically affects you. Using your own strengths, therapy can help you adjust and thrive wherever you are.
I offer a free 30-minute introductory session to meet and see if therapy is something for you.
