When homesickness starts to weigh: how living abroad affects mental health

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Saudade is perhaps the most Portuguese word there is — and those who move abroad know it with an intensity that those who stay rarely imagine. Missing your family, your friends, the smells, the food, the Sundays: all of that is normal and expected. Homesickness in itself is not a mental health problem. It is a human, healthy response to being far from those we love.

But there is a point at which it stops being an occasional visitor and becomes a constant presence. When that happens, it can open the door to something more serious — persistent sadness, isolation, anxiety, or what some researchers call "migratory grief": the process of loss tied to everything left behind.

What is migratory grief?

Moving abroad does not only cost you physical closeness to people. To varying degrees, you also lose your everyday language, the social standing you had, your support network, an identity built over years, and a sense of belonging. It is a multiple loss and, unlike other kinds of grief, an ambiguous one — because what you lost still exists, just far away.

This unprocessed grief can show up in ways we do not always connect with living abroad: irritability, constant tiredness, trouble sleeping, losing interest in things, a sense of emptiness or of being "on pause", waiting for a return that keeps being postponed.

Signs that homesickness may be turning into something else

• Sadness that will not lift — not only when you are in touch with home (calls, holidays), but present most days.
• Growing isolation — avoiding both your own community and that of your host country, feeling you belong to neither.
• Living "with your bags packed" — putting off decisions, friendships and plans because "this is temporary", for years on end.
• Guilt — for having left, for not being there as your parents age, for your children growing up far from their grandparents.
• Physical symptoms — changes in sleep and appetite, constant tension, aches with no apparent medical cause.

Why speaking in your own language makes a difference

Many people living abroad put off seeking psychological help for one very concrete reason: language. Even those fluent in French, German or English find that, when speaking about their deepest emotions, something is lost in translation. And it genuinely is: memories and emotions formed in your first language, and it is in that language that you reach them most truthfully.

Then there is cultural context. Explaining to a therapist from elsewhere what saudade means, the weight of family expectations, or that very Portuguese preoccupation with "what people will say", takes an effort of cultural translation that simply is not needed with someone who already knows it from the inside.

What you can do today

Keep rituals that connect both worlds (without living glued to your phone), put down real roots where you live, name what you feel instead of dismissing it as "just missing home", and — above all — do not wait for it to pass on its own once it has gone on too long. Online therapy has removed the last barrier: you can now have sessions in English or European Portuguese from any country, at times that fit your time zone.