How long does post-move anxiety usually last?

Highly individual. Many expats see anxiety patterns soften within 12–18 months as the new life settles. For others — particularly when underlying patterns predate the move — the post-move anxiety doesn't resolve on its own; it becomes the new baseline until something else changes. The duration isn't a good signal of severity.

Is moving abroad making my anxiety worse?

It might be amplifying the existing pattern — added cognitive load, isolation, the disruption of familiar regulation strategies — without being the underlying cause. The distinction matters: 'the move caused this' suggests another move would fix it; 'the move amplified an existing pattern' suggests the work is to address the pattern, regardless of where you live.

Not a question for a blog post. But: notice whether the question is information-seeking ('I have new data about home that would help me decide') or regulation-seeking ('this discomfort is uncomfortable and the move-question is a way to scratch it'). Most often it's the second, and answering it via another move tends to reset the cycle rather than resolve it.

What's the difference between this and culture shock?

Culture shock is the four-stage emotional arc people go through adapting to a new culture — usually peaking around month 6-12, resolving as adaptation deepens. Post-move anxiety can overlap with culture shock but doesn't follow its predictable arc. If your anxiety is still where it was at month 18 or month 36, it's probably not just culture shock anymore.

Where do I start if I want skills work?

Either the free 20-minute Discovery Call (rosemarkotic.com/contact) for 1:1 work, or the free Starter Guide (PDF + four short skills emails — rosemarkotic.com/resources/starter-guide) if you'd rather start independently. It covers the same core skills used in the 1:1 packages.

Resource · ~7 min read

Anxiety after moving abroad.

The move was supposed to feel like an answer. Instead, the anxiety came too — sometimes worse than before. Here’s what’s actually happening underneath, and the specific skills that help.

If you moved abroad and find yourself more anxious than before — not less — you’re not failing the move. You’re running into one of the most well-documented patterns of international relocation: the geographic cure doesn’t work, because anxiety is portable.

What does change after a move is the surface area — the things anxiety can attach to. The job stayed stressful, but now there’s the visa renewal too. The relationship is still complicated, but now you’re doing it with one of you in a country neither of you grew up in. The paperwork is in three languages. The friends are six time zones away.

The pattern doesn’t care that you moved. It just finds new things to be anxious about.

Three reasons anxiety often surfaces (or worsens) after a move

1. The cognitive load is real, and it’s underestimated.

Living abroad is a cognitive tax most expat content understates. You make small decisions all day that wouldn’t register at home: which bank, which insurance, which utility provider, how to do laundry in a building that uses a different system, what the local greeting is in this specific shop. The accumulated load is significant, and anxiety attaches to capacity that’s already spoken for.

The result: a baseline tension you can’t source to any one thing. It’s the whole life-administration layer running at higher overhead than it did at home.

2. The honeymoon ends abruptly.

First several months: novelty does some of your emotional work for you. The pastel buildings, the new café you can walk to, the sense of having made a real change — all of it buffers underlying patterns. Then the buffer wears thin, usually somewhere between month 8 and month 18, and the patterns you didn’t notice were waiting come into focus.

The confusion is genuine: if I’m in the city I chose, doing the work I want, why does it feel this way? The answer is usually that the move was real, but it wasn’t a substitute for the work the move was partly trying to avoid.

3. Isolation has a different shape abroad.

You can be in a city of two million and have no one who knows what your kitchen looks like. Friends back home, friends-of- friends here, the colleagues you Slack with daily and have never had coffee with — all of them are real, none of them quite reach where the loneliness lives. The conventional advice ("put yourself out there") underrates how much initiative this requires from someone whose tank is already lower than usual.

What actually helps

Skills-based work for post-move anxiety is concrete: specific tools, practiced between sessions, refined as your situation shifts. The three high-leverage moves I see most:

Bound the bureaucracy

Visa renewals, banking setup, tax registration, healthcare paperwork — these aren’t one task. They’re a background hum that, unbounded, occupies attention all the time. The skill is creating a contained zone — a recurring "admin block" (90 minutes, once a week is usually enough) that the rest of life is allowed to be untouched by. The work happens; the rest of the time is yours.

Initiate small, with structure

For isolation, the conventional "just put yourself out there" underestimates the activation cost of cold social initiation when anxious. What works better: minimum-viable social commitments that don’t require pre-event enthusiasm. A weekly recurring thing (a coworking morning, a language class, a Sunday walk with one specific person) is worth more than the larger event you might bail on. The structure carries you when motivation doesn’t.

Stop solving the wrong problem

A specific anxious-mind trap after a move: the question "should I move again?" The mind frames it as information-seeking when it’s usually a regulation attempt — the unease is uncomfortable, so the mind looks for an action to make it stop. The skill is recognizing the move question as a regulation strategy rather than a decision in front of you. Then doing the regulation work directly, and letting the move question come back when you actually have new information.

When to get help

Three rough heuristics for whether self-directed reading is enough vs. when working with someone is warranted:

Self-directed is fine if you’re mostly functional, the patterns are recognizable, and you have capacity to experiment with skills on your own.
Coaching helps when you’ve tried self-directed work and it hasn’t landed, or when the patterns are interlocking and you need someone to help you see them from outside.
Clinical care is needed when you’re having thoughts of self-harm, panic attacks that disrupt daily life, prolonged sleep collapse, or any pattern that feels beyond skills work. Coaching is not crisis care or clinical care — see our crisis resources page for immediate local support.

How I work with this

My coaching practice focuses specifically on this layer — anxiety, emotion regulation, and adjustment skills for English-speaking expats in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Croatia, and US professionals navigating similar patterns at home. The work is structured (4, 8, or 14-session packages), online, and skills-based. By the end, the goal is that you can run these tools without me.

If that sounds like a fit, the free 20-minute Discovery Call is the next step. If you’d rather start self-paced, the free Anxiety Skills Starter Guide covers the core skills in a short PDF plus four practice emails.

Book a Discovery Call Or start free — the Starter Guide

Frequently asked

Common questions

How long does post-move anxiety usually last?: Highly individual. Many expats see anxiety patterns soften within 12–18 months as the new life settles. For others — particularly when underlying patterns predate the move — the post-move anxiety doesn't resolve on its own; it becomes the new baseline until something else changes. The duration isn't a good signal of severity.
Is moving abroad making my anxiety worse?: It might be amplifying the existing pattern — added cognitive load, isolation, the disruption of familiar regulation strategies — without being the underlying cause. The distinction matters: 'the move caused this' suggests another move would fix it; 'the move amplified an existing pattern' suggests the work is to address the pattern, regardless of where you live.
Should I move back?: Not a question for a blog post. But: notice whether the question is information-seeking ('I have new data about home that would help me decide') or regulation-seeking ('this discomfort is uncomfortable and the move-question is a way to scratch it'). Most often it's the second, and answering it via another move tends to reset the cycle rather than resolve it.
What's the difference between this and culture shock?: Culture shock is the four-stage emotional arc people go through adapting to a new culture — usually peaking around month 6-12, resolving as adaptation deepens. Post-move anxiety can overlap with culture shock but doesn't follow its predictable arc. If your anxiety is still where it was at month 18 or month 36, it's probably not just culture shock anymore.
Where do I start if I want skills work?: Either the free 20-minute Discovery Call (rosemarkotic.com/contact) for 1:1 work, or the free Starter Guide (PDF + four short skills emails — rosemarkotic.com/resources/starter-guide) if you'd rather start independently. It covers the same core skills used in the 1:1 packages.

Rose Markotic · Anxiety Skills Coach

Rose’s path here runs through more than a decade of clinical training and practice — graduate training at Santa Clara University and years inside Dr. David Burns’ TEAM-CBT group at Stanford, the home of the measurement-driven framework.

More about Rose →

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