When I ask this question to my clients, the responses are very similar among all of them:
I want a better life for my family
I am looking for better job opportunities
For a better future for my kids
Looking for a safe place to live
And those are genuine responses. However, I have found out throughout the years working with emotional support for newcomers that those reasons are mostly different from the main reasons why people #migrate to another place. And the main reasons sometimes are unconscious and unclear to the person.
When facilitating #workshops or seeing clients one-one and I start talking about migration versus the decision to move, I use J.P. Morgan's quote: “The first step towards getting somewhere is deciding you're not going to stay where you are".”
And people started to think about what was the reason or reasons why they decided to migrate.
As the presentation or conversation goes along, I state: “No one migrates out of happiness”; and I ask them, "if all the reasons you mentioned to justify your move to a new country were not there, would you migrate?”
It is possible to hear a sudden pause followed by silence. Then, the sound of a deep breath in the room takes place; their eyes gaze moving up and down, recalling visual and auditory construction, kinesthetics, and digital auditory information.
But what could be the main reasons?
From the information I've collected in the past 20 + years working with newcomers, the decision to move to another land, preferably far away from their original land, is related to repetitive experiences they want to move away from.
The most common reasons are:
Family issues
Work issues
Cultural issues
Lack of freedom to be themselves
The lack of belonging
It is essential for newcomers or people who want to migrate to a new land to understand that physical and geographical movement can become an issue in their new land when the "behind the scenes" information is not processed well, I mean, not resolved.
And you may need to be made aware that our #thoughts, #feelings and #actions are directly influenced by unconscious information collected over the years in our lives.
To show my point, I'll give you an example. Let's say you wake up in the morning feeling great. You went to work or any other activity, and everything was fine until you suddenly started feeling drained and down, and you just wanted to recluse yourself from others. You may feel a vast empty hole inside yourself, your thoughts may overplay a situation from the past, you may start worrying about something, or you may want to run away without knowing why you feel this way.
What happens here is that the background noise takes over your mind. Maybe you heard, saw, or felt something that triggered the unconscious information. The #unconscious mind then reminds you about what went wrong in the past, and you may feel sad, angry, guilty, hurt, fearful, or anxious. Or maybe you have been missing home and not paying attention to the signs in front of you. And this cold discomfort can happen to all of us, independent of who and where we are.
Settling well in a new land takes time, and some newcomers may feel they need more time to feel they are part of their new land, which some others can never do; in any way, they end up paying a higher psychosocial price for the life that they one day dreamed about but realise they can no longer achieve it as they feel tired of "trying" to make their dreams come true. As a result, their self-confidence is gone, and they become disconnected from themselves… an endless hole in their mind, body and soul.
And all these draining situations create what I call: the “Second Class Citizen syndrome”, a deeply ingrained feeling that newcomers have. They see themselves as less than others in a land they feel is not theirs, and there is no other way but to conform, staying uncomfortable in their comfort zone, unable to take risks anymore. And all these emotional hardships are soul breakers to their life career abroad. And this happens to any newcomer, regardless of who they are or their circumstances, even if they are a #ceo moving on behalf of their #organisation or a #refugee who has been accepted to a new land. Apart if they are proficient in the local language or not, there is always a point in time when newcomers doubt themselves, their #abilities, their #values and external #acceptance. I have been there…
And that's why I have been supporting newcomers to understand their unconscious reasons, not for them to find an excuse for their move and hang in there to justify their situation but for them to understand their process of #decisionmaking, be aware of what happens inside their #minds that most of the time they are unconscious about; helping them to bring the #congruency to their lives.
As a reminder to all newcomers, whatever you have been telling about your reasons for moving abroad, you can change our #narrative; you can #change how you see yourself, change your situation, heal your wounds, and #changeyourlife. But only if you genuinely want to do it; and are #ready to invest the energy to make it happen. Then you will be able to keep moving forward!
Cema Santos - MSc
Career Counselling | Clinical Hypnotherapy | NLP | Coaching | Mentoring | Training
