Homesickness can appear at any point of our lives when we are away from home – on a business trip, while traveling, but mostly throughout college and university years. Studying abroad or in another city might cause some serious mental issues when you have to deal with being lonely among other people. Here are a few tips and methods of how to cope with homesickness.
Remember It’s Temporary
Everything pasts, nothing lasts. When you feel down because you are away from home, your family, and friends, remind yourself that it will not take too long for you to come back. Eventually, your studies will come to an end, or you might visit during the break – but you just need to pull through this low point in your life.
Every homesick person usually goes through particular stages:
- First comes excitement. You feel very energized and excited about the new chapter in your life. When it comes to students it might last a few days or weeks until the second stage comes.
- Feeling low, shocked, overwhelmed. Once the first phase ends, there comes a realization that studying is pretty hard, there are not that many instant friends you come across, and you need to deal with many obstacles on your way. This is the time when you feel down the most and might last a few weeks, or even a month or two.
- You slowly start to recover and feel better. If you know how to deal with homesickness and put your effort into recovery, you will shortly feel like you are able to pull this off.
The time every step takes depends on many factors and surely on your approach towards the situations and action you take in order to cope with homesickness as quickly as possible.
Stay Positive
To make time goes faster and make it easier for you to live life in a distant city, you need to understand a simple thing – if you can’t change a situation, change the approach. All you need is to find a real bright side to what you are now experiencing. Meet new people, learn something new, get a hobby, and travel to new places. The whole world is waiting for you to start enjoining your life.
It might seem like dull advice – how can you enjoy this time if all you want is to go back home? However, as long as you let yourself feel miserable, as long as you shut yourself in this sadness, and as long as you are blocked from all the good things around you, it only goes downhill. You might need to view a positive approach and mindset as a skill. And while any skill can be learned and developed, this is just what you need to do.
Chat Frequently
If you miss your family and friends, remember how lucky you are to live now when we have so many opportunities to communicate with each other over distance. Just imagine living the same life in the 1800s when all you can do is to send a letter, waiting for a response to be delivered weeks later.
Video and text chats are your savors right now. They can help you feel connected to the people you love even when you are far away from them. And this is what you can add to your daily routine in order to feel less lonely.
Keep Yourself Busy
As it was said earlier, having something good and enjoyable to do might help you out a lot. If you don’t have a hobby, try something new – pottery, knitting, postcard exchange, yoga, swimming, reading club… Choose what you like. Now you might think that you want nothing at all. It’s totally normal. But once you force yourself to do something for your personal enjoyment, you will see that it really helps a lot.
Studying is another thing that can help you make time go faster and distract you from sad thoughts. Even if you don’t like studying much, having a routine that keeps you busy and helps you feel active is what you need right now.
Bring Home With You
Sometimes you need just go back to the normal routine you had back at home or have something familiar next to you to feel happier. Bring something from your home that will bring you comfort, like a rug or your favorite pillow. It might seem silly and childish but it might help you feel less of a stranger in your own dorm room.
Another thing is to remember how your ordinary day would go back at home and apply the part of your home routine to your daily schedule. If you are used to having a bath every Sunday or drinking hot chocolate before going to bed, this is what you can and should do when you are away. It will help you cure your homesickness which is caused by a need to adjust when you get into a completely new and unknown environment. It’s a stressful situation and having something familiar around will help you adjust faster.