MENTAL AWARENESS SUPPORT

“This is going to take some getting used to”. No truer words were spoken than what my eight year old son said one week into living in London.

My husband, son and I are living in temporary housing near my husband’s new office in Central London, having moved from Boston, Massachusetts just a few days prior. The following Monday my husband went to work and my son and I began the new unfamiliar journey on the bus to his new school.

and the loneliness blanketed my every move. So why was it so hard? Why didn’t I feel like myself?

This was the first move out of the United States but still what was going on? At first, I assumed I just needed something to do, something to keep me busy and give me purpose. This isn’t a bad strategy, but it doesn’t address the entire problem. Keeping busy is great but it didn’t fix the disconnect I felt within myself. It took me a while to understand that the sudden severing from my previous world caused me to disengage from how I was experiencing myself in my new day to day. Nothing was like it was before and I felt off balance and afraid, and my coping strategy was to isolate.

In my virtual therapy private practice I use my education as a therapist and my experience living abroad to assist others in understanding their struggle and give them tools to find their sense of “self” again in new and old ways. Through connection, validation, and compassion I join people who are feeling a bit lost to help them find themselves again in a new country. Together we discover how profoundly moving away from the familiar can challenge our definition of ourselves, but also to help us locate a strength we weren’t aware we had.

The bus was crowded with commuters and I remember being desperately worried we would miss our stop. I was still exhausted from jet lag and the morning school drop off felt like trudging through mud! But it wasn’t until I turned away from the school after saying goodbye to my son that the realisation of what we had done flooded through my body.

We had packed up and moved to a foreign country where we knew no one. The weight of this decision felt heavy on my chest and I had to fight back tears. The long day of no plans and no one to talk to yawned before me and I began to walk. I had left my job, family and friends in the States just days before where everything was familiar and routine. Now, as I walked I didn’t recognise anything or anyone and I felt very alone.

I didn’t understand what was happening to me, all I knew was the more I felt unfamiliar, the less I felt like myself. Where was that confident woman who had purpose and direction back in Boston? I lost her when I was standing on the wrong side of the escalator and getting rudely bumped and grumbled at.

I couldn’t find her when I was frightened and intimidated by the money and refused to use the coins for fear I would do it wrong. My sense of self had disappeared and I retreated. My best friend became Charles Dickens, and when I wasn’t reading I was walking.

Many times my voice would be hoarse from no use when I would pick my son up at school and it would crack when I said hello. I realised I hadn’t spoken to anyone all day

As a psychologist, I know that our identity is partially made up of our encounters with the world, our connections. I understand who I am by my conversations with you and vice versa. We reinforce our identity with people, jobs, clothes, and the possessions we surround ourselves with. A sudden disappearance of most of what I defined myself by left a huge void in my sense of self. I struggled to regain my equilibrium long after my son made friends at school and my husband began to go to the pub with new colleagues after work.

Eventually I found a therapist and I began to talk. I talked about the loss of my prior life and the shame I felt for struggling. I allowed myself to grieve the old me so that I begin to find the new.

Reinvention of who we are can feel painful at times, but is also an opportunity for growth and change. We can and do build a new belief in ourselves as we grow in our new world.

“…when I awoke in the middle of the night, not knowing where I was, I could not even be sure at first who I was.”

- Marcel Prous

Dr. Bonnie Wims, Virtual Counseling Psychologist

www.bonniewims.com

T: +16177687411

E: bonnie@wimsandassociates.com