The emotional turmoil Americans face after moving abroad

In September 2025, Ruby Mora, a 34-year-old from Pennsylvania, packed her bags and moved to the Netherlands with her husband. As a neurodivergent Puerto Rican-Mexican woman, she didn’t feel safe in Trump’s America anymore. A community effort helped her finance the relocation and she also secured a visa called DAFT (Dutch-American Friendship Treaty), allowing her to live and work in the Netherlands as a self-employed entrepreneur. While she is just starting to feel settled today, nearly a year later, she never would have expected the complicated and challenging emotions that would surface after the move — and how long they’d last.

“The biggest emotion for me has to be grief, but specifically migratory grief,” Mora said. “And the other major feeling is the guilt; it’s just been this heavy guilt that is like, why should I get to be here and not my loved ones, not my friends, or colleagues?”

According to research from The Brookings Institution, a record number of Americans are leaving the United States. In 2025, the country experienced net negative migration for the first time in at least half a century, meaning more people left the country than entered. But for those who choose to leave, they’ve been met with unexpected emotional turbulence. After the initial excitement wears off, many people face loneliness, sadness, guilt and grief — aspects of the move that aren’t often discussed before one. As a result, a cottage industry of mental health “expat therapists” has emerged, helping people navigate these complex emotions of moving abroad.

Janaline Smalman, an expat therapist and founder of Healing Art Journey, said it’s common for people who move abroad to struggle with unexpected, challenging emotions for a variety of reasons.

“People expect excitement,” Smalman, who has lived and worked in 13 different countries, said. “What actually shows up is messier.”

She said there’s grief for the people, routines and even a person’s identity that’s been left behind. And as Mora experienced, there’s guilt.

“Especially around leaving family, and anger at how much harder ordinary tasks suddenly are,” Smalman said. “Then there’s comparison: near-constant, measuring of the new place against the old one, and there’s a loss of identity that catches people off guard.”

In America, Americans knew how life functioned. But when someone moves abroad, they’re starting from zero. Smalman said this can be especially challenging for Americans.

“Americans often come from a culture built on independence, productivity and self-reliance,” she said. “When everyday tasks suddenly require help, or take three times as long because of language or unfamiliar systems, it can feel disorienting in a way that catches people off guard.”

Enikö Hajas, a psychotherapist who works with people who relocate abroad, said it’s common to experience depression, loneliness or grief in the first year or two after moving.

“It happened to me 30 years ago, and it happens to many clients of mine,” she said.

Hajas said there’s a predictable sequence of events that can occur. First, it can show up as small irritations — like feeling annoyed with the bureaucracy or the transportation system. Then, it turns into critique. When people fail or make a mistake, they can become very emotional and blame the new culture and country.

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“They start idealizing their old culture; suddenly things seem much nicer than when they lived at home,” she said. “When loneliness hits them and the lack of a social support system, they start resenting the locals and perhaps even avoid meeting them and isolate themselves.”

In 2019, Zeni Bandy moved from San Francisco to Paris. While she loved the Bay Area, she felt like the culture was too focused on work. Instead, she was at a point in her life where she wanted to focus on building community. Since her husband at the time had previously lived in Paris and had family there, relocating to France made sense. Bandy had only visited Paris for a week before, but she didn’t expect culture shock would affect her as much as it did.

“I hadn’t done much research; I just didn’t know what I was getting myself into,” Bandy said. “And I’m actually really appreciative that I didn’t, because I probably wouldn’t have done it if I would’ve known.”

Bandy found the move immediately challenging — from trying to figure out how to buy a gym locker to discovering her preferred grocery store, every task felt like extra work.

“Doing the most basic things was extremely daunting,” Bandy said. “It was a pretty isolating experience.”

It wasn’t until she got pregnant and connected with the English-speaking parent community that she started to really see herself in Paris long-term. After her daughter was born, when there was a school shooting in the U.S., she thought about how, if she returned to the states, she would have to decide how to explain safety and gun violence to her daughter.

“I remember thinking, so when we go back, do we teach her gun violence and being safe — or do we just wait and let the school do it?” she said. “Then I realized that I don’t have to make that decision.”

Smalman said many Americans also struggle with losing a “piece of professional identity.” That was true for Hilary Hodge, who moved from Chicago to Paris in 2017. Her first couple of years abroad were fine, she said, but when she moved to a smaller city in the Loire Valley in France, she felt more isolated. She also struggled with how her professional life changed. Fortunately, she was able to work with a British therapist living in France to work through these emotions.

“She has helped me quite a bit reconcile letting go of what I thought my career trajectory was going to be and embracing a new one,” Hodge said.

Smalman said the way she helps people process these emotions is through art therapy. First, she reads a poem. Then, a client is encouraged to create art. “It’s about giving a shape to what’s hard to say out loud,” she said. “Then we reflect together, often through journaling, on what came up.” It’s not about the outcome of the art, but rather an opportunity to reflect without judgement.

“A space where they don’t have to hold it together or explain themselves,” she said. “To pause, create, and come back to who they are underneath all the change.”

Mora said, for Americans considering a move abroad, it’s important to know there will be challenges — but there are also resources, and it will get easier. In addition to therapists, she said there are plenty of resources online and international centers to help people assimilate.

“It’s not going to be easy, but given how much both my husband and I have gained from living here where there are so many human-centered policies, I say it was so beyond worth it,” Mora said.