Why Moving Abroad Feels So Tiring (And What Actually Helps)

When I moved to the GCC one of the conversations I had frequently with my fellow expats was how tired we all felt. As we spoke, sentences would come up like I feel "a bit weird" or "a bit emotional" or perhaps "I'm struggling to think straight", "I feel like I'm going slightly mad", and this was followed by the inevitable self-flagellations of "why am I feeling like this? It's exciting, I'm happy, I'm excited to be here!!" As I listened, this dichotomy became increasingly apparent, headaches and tiredness, with a "why am I feeling like this, being here is a good thing".

This got me thinking… what research is there on the impact of a relocation abroad? The answer is surprisingly little on expats specifically. Most studies on migration and the body look at refugees and migrants facing frankly much much harder circumstances. But there are some insights that help answer this experience…

What happens when you move

Your mental blueprints get rocked

A lot of our day-to-day life runs on things called schemas, which are mental 'recipe cards' which are built from our lived experiences and are short cuts for what to do next. Take your home supermarket, you know how it works… where things are, what the packaging means, how to queue, how to pay. You don't think about it, it just kind of happens. One day your supermarket does that thing where they reorganise the shop floor...suddenly you have to stop and actually think about where everything is, move country and my supermarket analogy becomes the same thing on steroids: the shops, currency, driving style, school system, work system, they all need recalibration and new, slightly different recipe cards.

We have these schemas for all sorts of things that we experience every day; our brain creates automatic links between environment and response, which then becomes a habit. This is actually very useful because it limits our cognitive load, meaning we can crack on with all the other thinking we have to do (hurrah!).

That creates cognitive load

Without this autopilot, like when Tesco re-merchandises, we have to think more and think deliberately. A two-hour supermarket trip spent reading labels, working out where things are and converting riyals to pounds is genuinely effortful and not unusual (the longest I've heard so far is 3.5 hours, so you're not alone people).

Then add the big things: a new job, finding a school, a child settling in, medical insurance, a new social circle, vets for pets. It all needs your attention, it all needs your decisions.

This isn't low-level stress

It is tempting to call this "mild" stress. I personally don't think it is. Relocation usually bundles several major life changes together. It's unlikely to be acute BUT perhaps is, to a degree, chronic for a while, a kind of background radiation of extra brain power needed. It's constant, day after day, until we recalibrate.

And science has a term for this: allostatic load, the cumulative wear and tear as the body's stress systems keep adapting to ongoing demands (McEwen, 1998). The small amount of direct research on expats fits this picture (Anderzén and Arnetz, 1999).

This quite obviously very much matters for expats. Relocation is full of uncertainty and moments of feeling out of control, not to mention the new social situations where perhaps we worry about getting it wrong, saying the wrong thing, making a bad joke (no, just me? Oh well). On top of that, if you already experience anxiety, particularly social anxiety, meeting new people and working out unwritten social rules may make this more intense.

So why might we feel 'a bit weird'?

When we are under stress, the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that helps us plan, focus and regulate emotions, tends to work less well. Research suggests even fairly mild uncontrollable stress can impair it, and some studies suggest prolonged stress can even change it structurally (Arnsten, 2009).

A 2025 study of 207 partners who relocate with internationally mobile employees found that perceived stress and isolation were the biggest predictors of wellbeing (Aegerter et al., 2025). This in turn can activate our threat response and sympathetic nervous system, further making us feel a bit weird, perhaps even a bit emosh, a bit shorter tempered, a bit "out of it".

So, what's my point? If you've just moved abroad and you are feeling a bit off right now, don't panic; the chances are it's very, very normal, you are recalibrating and feeling the load.

What helps then?

Well, the good news is we can help ourselves during this recalibration period, and actually there may even be some benefits to creating our new schemas!

1. Use the window to build new habits

Because your old habits have been disrupted, this is one of the best times to build new ones! Always fancied learning to play padel, fancy going to the gym more, want to learn French? Well, now's the time!

Researchers call this the habit discontinuity hypothesis (Verplanken and Wood, 2006), ooooo fancy! Simply put, most of your habits are out of the window anyway, as your routine is new, so while creating your new habits there is a window where you are more likely to consciously choose some new ones. Sadly, this does require some effort on your part, but the theory suggests there is a window of opportunity where they are more likely to stick! Yippee!

How? Think of habits like walking across a field of long grass. The first time, it is wet and uncomfortable. Walk the same route every day and the grass flattens until there is a well-worn path. Moving abroad means many of your old paths have gone. So, if there is something you have wanted to start, start now, and repeat it in the same place at the same time. Sadly, this lovely window does not stay open forever, before you fall into a routine (trust me). A UK survey of more than 18,000 people found the effect was strongest in the first months after a house move and faded the longer people stayed put (Thomas, Poortinga and Sautkina, 2016).

2. Give yourself time

Recalibrating takes effort. Expect ordinary tasks to take longer for a while. Build downtime into your week and be kind to yourself when a simple errand wipes you out. It's normal, don't overthink it; think like Hugh Grant in About a Boy for a bit and plan a few tasks a day.

3. Calm your nervous system

If our sympathetic nervous system is activated, that is our body letting us know we are not safe. The reality is you are safe, so we need to tell our bodies that and tap into our parasympathetic nervous system, sometimes called the soothe system.

The classic – breathe! This has some of the best evidence. A 2022 review of 223 studies found slow breathing increases the heart rate measures linked to the body's calming, rest-and-digest system (Laborde et al., 2022).

Another classic! Exercise, and if all else fails, walk. Physical activity is widely recognised as good for mood. Walking also boosts creative thinking: Stanford researchers found people generated more ideas while walking and shortly afterwards and walking on an indoor treadmill worked as well as walking outdoors (Oppezzo and Schwartz, 2014). So, if you are stuck on how to handle a child struggling at school or a tricky situation at work, a walk may help you see more options. Nature may bring extra benefits, but in Doha's heat, a treadmill still counts.

Do mastery tasks. These are achievable, absorbing activities that give you a sense of accomplishment, importantly though without too much pressure. Annoyingly for me, cleaning is the one I like to do; for some it is gaming, for others it's Lego. Research on flow, being absorbed in a well-matched task, suggests it involves a balanced state of both our parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems, so we are alert but nice and regulated, with both the activating and calming sides of the nervous system at work (Peifer et al., 2014). Meaning these mastery tasks can literally balance us out!

4. Find your people

Isolation is one of the strongest themes in research. And connection can calm the stress response itself: in one experiment, men who had support from their best friend before a stressful public speaking task showed lower cortisol responses than those who faced it alone (Heinrichs et al., 2003).

Stay connected with the people back home you can truly be yourself with. And look for connection here. The upside of expat life is that many people are in the same position and are open to new friendships. Go to the coffee morning, even if it isn't usually your thing. Ask for someone's number. Not everyone will be your person, and that is fine and let's face it every jar doesn't have the same lid, but keep going until you find people you feel safe with.

5. Prioritise sleep

Sleep helps consolidate the huge amount of new information you are taking in, which is exactly what your brain needs while it builds new blueprints.

There is also an influential theory, sometimes called "overnight therapy", that sleep helps take the emotional edge off difficult experiences (Walker and van der Helm, 2009). You have perhaps felt this where you have gone to bed and something feels huge, and you wake up and it's not so bad anymore.

My point overall being, if you are more tired than usual, listen to your body.

And let's not forget

The huge benefits that come with moving abroad: the plethora of awesome people from all walks of life you will meet, the experiences you will have, both good and bad, that will make you resilient and wise, the places you will see, the cultures you will experience, all of which will be making you richer (and I'm not talking about tax here, people).

Moving abroad asks a lot of your brain and body. The tiredness is real, the stress can be impactful, and isolation matters. But it is also a rare chance to rebuild your life with intention. Give yourself time, look after your nervous system, find your people, and use the window to do things you've always fancied but never got around to.