The following transcript was generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Carlie: Hey there, it’s Carlie with the Expat Focus Podcast. Global mobility and health studies have found that moving abroad takes a much heavier toll on your mental health than previously thought. It also comes with some unique psychological challenges that not everyone can relate to. Today’s guest, Anna Zhadan, experienced this firsthand, leaving Belarus at a young age and making many more international moves since.
She was inspired to create the site My Expat Mind to help expats and foreigners find therapists to support their mental wellbeing wherever they are. Anna, thanks so much for joining me on the Expat Focus Podcast. It’s lovely to have you on the show.
Anna: Thank you so much for having me, Carlie.
Carlie: You’re no stranger to international moves. Can you tell me when that started for you and why?
Anna: My first move happened when I was just nine years old, and ever since I’ve moved so consistently and so often that moving became a big part of my identity and of who I see myself as. Some of the moves were very practical — for university or with my parents — but some others were more of a conscious decision, like moving for work or travelling for career aspirations.
Many of my moves were not the perfect Eat Pray Love moment, not extremely exciting or glamorous. Some of the worst emotional challenges of my life came with many of my moves, simply because of adjusting, homesickness, just not really feeling like I fit in. But at the same time, they were beautiful and taught me quite a lot of things about myself and about life.
Carlie: I can imagine it makes you grow up a little bit faster than you might have otherwise as well.
Anna: Absolutely. I learned to become independent much faster than I would have otherwise. And learning to adapt to a new culture — how do I speak to people, how do I make friends, how do I go about things — it makes you a bit more focused much earlier. So yes, it’s definitely a bit of an accelerator.
Carlie: And where do you call home these days?
Anna: It’s a very hard question. With time and with many moves, I’ve come to realise that many of the places I’ve been brought something to me. Some were very energizing and fun to be in. Some were very grounding and calming. So there are different places for different stages of your life, and that’s something I’ve really learned.
Some places are great for accelerating and growing your career. Some are great for retiring. Some are great to make friends in because people are very open and social. For me personally, it’s simply the place where I spent the most time with my family, which is Lithuania.
For the longest time I would say I call home wherever my family is. But now that I’m growing older and trying to build new routines and places by myself, where my family isn’t there, I’m learning as I go and trying to find ways to make every place home in some way.
Carlie: And we’re recording today both based in France. Is that where you’re living at the moment?
Anna: Yes, exactly.
Carlie: I made my first move away from my hometown when I was 20. At the time, I moved to this tropical rainforest town near the beach, but I probably didn’t really fully appreciate it as a 20-year-old. I wanted to be back in a big city, whereas now I’m like, “Oh, that would be great.” I didn’t know what I had. So are there places you lived when you were younger that you think, “Oh, it would be cool to go back there”?
Anna: When I was younger, I was really excited about my first move to Prague. That’s where I moved for university. A lot of it is just associated with excitement for me, because it was the first time you’re fully moving away from home — your first thing as an adult on your own. So there was a lot of that connotation coming with it.
So I’d say Prague is probably what I really liked when I was younger. Right now it’s hard to say, to be honest. I don’t think I’ve fully figured out where I’d see myself long term, and I guess that’s part of the emotional challenges that come with moves.
Carlie: What other sorts of challenges have come with moving so frequently in your life? I can imagine one positive would be that you’re very good at packing and not hanging on to things. Would I be correct?
Anna: Probably, though I think that’s more of a character feature in some ways. I generally don’t get that attached to things, to be honest — physical things — so it’s actually quite easy for me to move in that sense. But for people who get attached to their candles and their things, I think it’s important to take that with you when you’re moving.
When it comes to challenges, there was a good mix of psychological and logistical ones. A lot of things like loneliness, feeling a bit out of place, and even meeting new people and thinking, “Okay, you’ve lived in this place your entire life, you know every corner, you’re so familiar with everything, and I will never quite share that experience.”
So there were a lot of issues like this, and then some were a bit more pragmatic — understanding the bureaucracy, the healthcare system. I think that’s just not really talked about enough, and that’s something we’re trying to make clear at My Expat Mind. We do a lot of research into healthcare systems in different countries to make it a bit more understandable. But being sometimes surrounded by people and still feeling very disconnected is a very common thing.
Carlie: I’d like to get onto My Expat Mind, but first I’m curious about how moving around so much shaped you as a person when it came to going to different schools, making new friends, building community. Was that difficult?
Anna: Yeah, in many ways. It makes you very adaptable very quickly. It makes you learn how to adjust, how to fit in. But building routines and building friendships and relationships is definitely a real challenge. Another problem is maintaining the relationships you have back home, because you still have your old friends and your family, but they’re all back there and you’re here. How do you maintain that connection while also trying to build something locally?
Carlie: How do you do it?
Anna: How do you do it, Carlie? I’m not sure I have it all figured out, to be honest. Even after years and years of moving, I still sometimes feel like I’m falling out of touch with my friends back home. We try to stay in touch and make sure we’re connected, but of course it’s a bit different because they’re there and I’m here.
Thankfully now we have the internet and social media, and it’s much easier to communicate. But sometimes not seeing each other in person can become a bit hard. So we try to visit each other, but that’s not something that can happen frequently. So I don’t think I’ve got everything figured out in that sense yet.
Carlie: I was back home in Australia the other year cleaning out my childhood bedroom, and I found a box of letters from a school friend who moved up to the other side of Australia — like a three days’ drive away. We never saw each other again, but for a while there we wrote letters back and forth about how she was settling into a new school and making friends. It was like this snapshot of life decades ago. That’s how you kept in touch before email and the internet, and told each other what life was like. It was quite wholesome to find those letters.
Anna: That’s so beautiful. Did you feel like that helped you stay connected?
Carlie: At the time, yeah. Did you have those best friend charms when you were at school? You’d keep one for yourself and give half to somebody else. I think I gave her half of one, but so did a bunch of other girls at school. I don’t think my best friend was mutually exclusive. So yeah, at the time it was so meaningful, and it was really sweet to come across those letters and be reminded of moving away and how you kept in touch.
Anna: You could even keep them and read them back. It reminds you of a different period of your life. Pretty amazing.
Carlie: Oh no, I very happily threw them away.
Anna: Okay, that’s fair.
Carlie: I’d just finished a podcast about hoarder families, and I went, “Oh yeah, I should probably not become that person.” They can stay in my memories now. I’d love to know, how did My Expat Mind come about?
Anna: My Expat Mind came from seeing a very real gap. There are so many expats these days — people move around more easily today than ever. You go to new places, and then other new places, and it’s a forever cycle you’re in.
Now, there are two problems when you’re an expat. First, you have psychological challenges that are quite unique to expats — homesickness, loneliness, feeling like you don’t fit in. Those aren’t common across every single category of people, but they’re very unique to expats.
And then, okay, you’re in a new country. You don’t speak the language. You don’t know much about the system. So how are you going to find a therapist? How do you even get to the place where you feel you can start looking for one, and where do you start from?
So there’s that issue, and also there are so many talented therapists who work specifically with expats, but finding them is very fragmented and not very simple. We wanted to make that simple — easier to connect people who specialise in those issues with the people who really need help.
Carlie: That’s so clever. I even remember here in France trying to find a therapist a few years ago, and what was very top of mind was native English, because there was no way I’d be able to express myself and my feelings adequately in French. Baby French — saying “I’m happy, I’m sad” — just wasn’t going to cut it for how I was feeling.
But the other thing that was really important to me was a therapist who understood the specific struggles of being an expat, a foreigner living in a foreign country. What are some of those specific struggles that come up in your experience?
Anna: There are so many — a real range. Loneliness and homesickness are probably some of the most common ones we encounter with expats. But other than that, there’s a huge range, from identity shifts to feeling like you don’t fit in, missing your family, having relationship strain. Careers sometimes slow down because of the fact that you move to a new country and you don’t know how to go about things. So there’s definitely a big range, for sure.
Carlie: Yeah, definitely. I went through the career thing when I moved for my now husband. It wasn’t to a location that was favorable for me career-wise, so I had to understand what I was compromising and whether I was okay with that.
The loneliness and the FOMO in most recent years has been so strong for me. Because what I realise as I’ve gotten older is my parents are getting older, my siblings are getting older, I have nephews now, and they’re all moving on with life and I’m not there. That’s such a hard one to reconcile.
Anna: A hundred percent. That’s something I’ve encountered a lot as well — I want to be with them, to live through the experiences they’re living through, but I’m not there. They’re going about their lives, and you start FOMO-ing a little bit, thinking, “Maybe I should come back just to share those experiences.” It’s a hard thing to reconcile, for sure.
Carlie: It really is. So how does My Expat Mind work? Who is it available to, and how do you… Because I feel like choosing a therapist is a bit like dating. The first therapist you see isn’t always going to be a perfect match for you, right?
Anna: A hundred percent. For the most part, people usually try to contact at least two or three therapists. We understand that people are looking for very specific things — specific languages, a specific location — so we have filters that let people filter therapists based on their preferences.
With the language, it’s exactly what you said. People might not want to have therapy in the language of the country they moved to. They might want it in their native tongue, or in English. All of our therapists clearly state the languages they work in. And all of our therapists have expat experience, which is also stated in their profile, so you can compare therapists and see who’s a good fit.
There are also more bureaucratic and structural things, like whether therapists can provide insurance reimbursement letters, the fees, sliding scales, different discounts. All of that is clearly available, and it’s really meant to make it as easy as possible for expats to understand, “Okay, this person could be a good fit for me.”
Carlie: And what sort of commitment is it? I’ve seen therapy sites where you pay a monthly subscription, or is it one-off fees?
Anna: Clients don’t pay us anything — they only pay the therapists. We’re more like a directory, so we just list therapists who are available, and we don’t take any money from the therapist’s sessions with the client. Everything is arranged directly between the therapist and the client, so we don’t interfere in that relationship at all. People who come onto the site and look for therapists don’t pay us anything.
Carlie: Anna, especially in the last decade, there’s been a trend towards understanding that therapy is there not only for when you feel like you’re struggling, but for good mental health. In your opinion, what makes therapy so beneficial?
Anna: There are quite a few layers to this. To start, when it comes to processing your feelings and emotional challenges, sometimes it’s very hard to even recognise what you’re struggling with. Sometimes you have a feeling, but you can’t really put it into words. You don’t really know what it is, let alone how to deal with it.
And sometimes those feelings become so overwhelming and so hard to process that it becomes almost inevitable that you’re seeking some kind of solution — anything that will help you be functional. At that point, therapy is extremely beneficial. It’s not a bunch of talk that’s supposed to make you feel better for a little bit and then you get over it. It’s a very structured change of who you are and how you view and approach things, to make it easier for you to live.
Mental health obviously hasn’t been talked about quite as much in the past, but luckily now it’s pretty much everywhere, because we know health is not only physical — a lot of it is in your head. Therapy should be treated, for many people, in the same way as doing your yearly checkup or going to a doctor. It’s essential for your own functioning and wellbeing in so many more ways than just feeling good on the outside.
Carlie: Definitely. I remember the first time I told my mom I was going to see a therapist, and her first question was, “Oh, why? Is something wrong?” I had to explain that, well, no, nothing’s necessarily wrong, but I have big feelings sometimes, and I’m here in a foreign country living with my now husband, and he cannot be all things to me. He can’t be my partner and my best friend and my therapist. That’s insane.
For the health of our relationship and for my health, I need to talk to somebody who’s not in my relationship about things going on in my life. It was interesting to frame that for the first time with my parents and say, “Therapy’s not just for when you’re having a crisis.”
Anna: Absolutely. And it’s important that you don’t shift that responsibility onto your partner as well. They love you and they want to support you, but you can’t say, “Okay, this is my only outlet for all of my emotional crises.”
Carlie: “Let me dump my childhood trauma on you—”
Anna: Exactly.
Carlie: “—and then make you dinner later.”
Anna: And they’re probably not even the best person suited to help anyway.
Carlie: No. Well, in my case, my husband’s never lived abroad. So there’s an absolute fundamental difference in understanding, right? That leads me to the question: on your website, I’m assuming you’re able to look at the therapists available — does it talk about their backgrounds, whether they might be expats themselves?
Anna: Absolutely. Most of our therapists are expat-experienced — they’ve moved countries — and every profile clearly states what exact experience they have with expats and which issues they’ve dealt with consistently. All of the specialisations are listed as well, so you can see what problems that person deals with that could be beneficial to you.
There’s also a section on each profile called “You Might Resonate With This Therapist If.” These sections summarise their experience in a succinct way and explain clearly whether the therapist might be suitable for you and who they could be suitable for.
Carlie: I want a therapist who’s a fellow elder millennial really into punk rock music.
Anna: Okay, that could be one option.
Carlie: All right. So, therapists, update your profiles, please.
Anna: Exactly. Keep in touch with the recent desires of your clients.
Carlie: You mentioned local health insurance, and obviously this differs country to country. Is therapy through My Expat Mind generally covered, or is it impossible to really make a blanket statement on that?
Anna: As you pointed out correctly, this differs significantly by the therapist, your insurance, and the country you’re based in. Some countries are very strict with this, some are a bit more lenient. While many therapists are able to provide reimbursement documentation, whether you get reimbursement will depend entirely on the system you live in.
But as I said, one thing we’re trying to do with My Expat Mind is make it simpler and easier to understand how to navigate those systems — in which systems you’re likely to get reimbursement and in which you’re not. We have a special section on our site called “Does my health insurance cover reimbursement in X country?” All of these should explain quite clearly whether online therapy is covered, whether therapy with an international provider is covered, and whether there’s a special requirement for that specific country for your insurance to cover therapy.
Carlie: Now, Anna, being so experienced at moving yourself, I have to ask: what is one packing tip that you swear by?
Anna: One packing tip. I’m not sure I swear by it, but it’s a tip I would definitely give. When you move, obviously you want to unpack all of your essentials — that’s completely fine. But what I would definitely do is unpack one, two, three things that make you feel a bit more at home, that help create your routine, that help you feel like, “Okay, I can finally see something in this place that makes my surroundings feel familiar.”
So that could be your favorite candle or mug, or a book — anything that reminds you of home a little bit and associates that new place with better times, with good places. I think it’s essential to establish that nice spot for you where, okay, it’s very different and very new, but there’s something about it that makes me feel at home.
Carlie: That’s a really nice idea. Put it in that essentials box that you open first, on your first night.
Anna: Exactly.
Carlie: Well, Anna, this has been such a great conversation. Where can people find My Expat Mind and explore the therapists?
Anna: My Expat Mind is a website, so it’s freely available online to anybody. But we’re also on the socials — Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. So we’re inviting everybody to explore the website and see if you connect with any therapist. Sometimes you don’t need to book anything right away. Sometimes it’s good to explore and then maybe come back at some point in your life if you feel like it’s the right time.
Carlie: That’s it for today. Can you relate to some of the mental health struggles that seem to just go hand-in-hand with living abroad? Let us know in the comments on our YouTube channel. You can also let us know there if there’s a topic you’d love to hear covered on an upcoming episode of the show. Just search for Expat Focus.
Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and follow, however you like to listen. And expatfocus.com is the place to go to benefit from loads of free resources designed to help make your move abroad just that little bit easier.