Living Abroad E-Book

Ivett Schrammel

• Herausgeber: Nap-Mandala Kft
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 127

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

This is the book that every person living abroad and planning to move abroad needs.

The new book of the author of the blog called Psychologist Online. 

This is the writing and advice of a psychologist having 20 years of professional experience, „her own experiences” of the 5 years spent abroad and nearly 18.000 readers to those who live abroad and to the ones who are planning to move abroad.

So that the big adventure of your life, a fresh start, will be the realization of your dreams.

Who is this book for?

You've been planning to move abroad for a while, but you're full of insecurity, fears, and don't dare to go for it?

You'd start a new life, but you don't know how to get started?

You have been living abroad for some time, but do you feel that no one understands your difficulties and dilemmas?

You live abroad, but your expectations weren’t met and you don't know how to make your situation better?

Then this book is for you!

Why should you read it?

Here you can find a solution to your problems!

You can eliminate your insecurities, your fears.

You can get to know yourself more, you can understand yourself

You can develop your skills, your personality, you can gain new resources

You can at last confidently carry your dreams into execution and start planning and achieving your goals.

You can make your dreams come true abroad.

You can find your own way, your happiness.

Leseprobe

Ivett Schrammel

Living Abroad

– from a Psychologist’s View

Original, Hungarian edition:

Schrammel Ivett: Külföldön élni – pszichológus szemmel

Published by: Nap-Mandala Ltd. 2019.

www.pszichologusonline.eu

Copyright © Ivett Schrammel, 2019.

All rights reserved

English edition:

Ivett Schrammel: Living abroad – from a psychologist’s view

Edited by: Ivett Schrammel

Book cover and photographs: Ivett Schrammel

Translator: Lilla Jankovits

Published by: Nap-Mandala Ltd. 2021.

www.psychologistonline.eu

Copyright © Ivett Schrammel, 2021.

All rights reserved

ISBN 978-615-81594-0-1

ISBN 978-615-81594-1-8

ISBN 978-615-81594-2-5

Contents

Introduction

1. A Hungarian psychologist in Gibraltar

2. Why is it good to live abroad?

3. Useful advice for the people moving abroad

4. Where do we really feel „at home”?

5. Multicultural subjective – What it is like to be a Hungarian abroad?

6. A new life abroad – with children

7. The four stages of the new life

8. The difficulties of moving to another country

8.1 All about homesickness

8.2 What about the old relationships?

8.3 Looking for a partner abroad

9. Does moving abroad heal you or make you sick?

10. Cultural shock and reverse cultural schock

11. Dilemmas and choices. To go or to stay?

12. What do I take home with me to Hungary?

13. What can you learn from the years spent abroad?

14. You can get used to everything, but some things are not worth it

15. How to take the change as something positive?

16. How can you get help if you live abroad?

17. What is the secret of effective goal planning?

Epilogue

Acknowledgement

I’m grateful to my daughters and my husband for their support and patience provided while I was writing this book and my previous articles, as these were all time-consuming work. I’m grateful to them that we could experience the biggest common adventure of our life, living abroad.

I extend my gratitude to my clients as well for their trust and confidence, for sharing with me their life stories, their experience of living abroad, because the lessons learnt and conclusions drawn from these can help others as well.

I’m grateful to my readers that they have been following my writings for years, and thanks to their positive feedbacks I know it’s worth my while to write.

Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to the readers of this book for respecting the author’s rights, for buying this book, this way supporting that I can actively continue focusing on writing, and so they contribute to the publication of my further books.

The new book of the author of the blog called Psychologist Online.

This is the writing and advice of a psychologist having 20 years of professional experience, „her own experiences” of the 5 years spent abroad and nearly 18.000 readers to those who live abroad and to the ones who are planning to move abroad.

So that the big adventure of your life, a fresh start, will be the realization of your dreams.

Introduction

Who is this book aimed at?

Have you been planning to move abroad for a while, but you are still full of doubts and fears, so you don’t dare to have a go?

Would you like to start a new life, but you don’t know how to get started with that?

Have you been living abroad for a while, but you feel nobody understands your difficulties and dilemmas?

Although you live abroad, your expectations weren’t met and you don’t know how to make your situation better?

Then this book is for you!

Why is it worth your while to read it?

In this book you can find solutions to your problems!

You can eliminate your doubts and fears.

You can get to know and understand yourself more.

Your skills and your personality can develop, you can gain new resources.

Finally you can set to act confidently and get down to planning and realizing your aims.

You can fulfil your dreams abroad.

You can find your own way and happiness.

Why did I write this book? My story.

I’ve also spent abroad most of the last 10 years, I visited 3 countries in 5 years, I lived in Austria as well as in Malta, and Gibraltar was the place where I lived the longest. During this time – and since then up to now – I’ve worked mainly online and through Skype as a psychologist with my clients living abroad or in Hungary, providing psychological consultation as well as advisory services.

While I was living abroad, I got started with writing that I had postponed for years before, and my purpose by sharing my experience and thoughts is to help others have a better life.

Over the years plenty of people contacted me with very similar problems:

With doubts, fears and the feeling of insecuritiy they had before moving.

The difficulties after moving: problems of adaptation and integration.

With the deterioration of earlier anxiety as well as with the appearance of new one.

With the difficult feelings experienced during the cultural shock.

With the lack and loss of self-confidence.

With the tense feeling of homesickness.

With unbearable loneliness.

Mysterious psychosomatic symptoms.

With the dilemma of „shall I stay or shall I go”.

With the unexpected difficulties of moving home, with the problem of moving back and that of the reverse cultural shock.

I’m aware that a lot of people struggle with similar problems, since moving abroad means serious challenges for everyone. I’m aware of the fact too that most people feel they’re alone with these problems as they don’t speak about that for a long time, they don’t ask for help, and this way they obviously don’t even know how many other people have similar feelings.

Only those can understand this situation completely who have also experienced moving to another country and living there.

This book was written to prepare the people planning to move abroad for the change, to help them with the planning and realization, furthermore, to support the people living abroad to integrate and adapt successfully, to be able to understand and process their feelings and experience more efficiently.

You can read about my own experiences I went through abroad as well as my experiences gained during my work with my clients as a psychologist.

You can get some guidance how to get down to it, what is worth paying attention to while preparing for the big adventure of your lives and building a new life.

The book contains the transcript, the extended version of my earlier articles as well as my new writings, so my old thoughts will pop up again, but at the same time you can get acquainted with new things.

As a bonus, in the last chapter of the book I share with you the steps of the efficient goal planning as well, and if you follow these steps precisely both in theory and practice, nothing will „save” you from reaching your goals.

This is a great opportunity to deepen your self-knowledge and develop your personality, as every big journey is an internal journey as well that leads to the innermost of our souls. While you get to know the world, you get acquainted with yourself as well. This way may involve a deep internal transformation and personality development, especially if we go through that consciously.

What do my current readers say about my writings?

Readers’ recommendations:

„I think the blog called „Psychologist Online” is a great source of knowledge. The thought-provoking writings of Ivett help me to get absorbed in several diverse topics and prompt me to go beyond my usual thinking processes. I find her practical advice also really useful, whether it is about the management of everyday life or getting acquainted with opportunities how to solve a certain problem. I feel that with Ivett’s help I can get closer to a more complete, conscious and healthy way of life.”

Éva (Dubai)

„Earlier I had never felt living abroad could be a challenge. I always thought that we, the people who left our home country, had been granted something much better, so I must feel better. This way I hadn’t really understood what was going on deep inside me. The blog helped me to make me understand my own feelings after putting them to the right place. Now I can already admit to myself honestly that it wasn’t that easy at all, and I can afford not to feel good all the time, even if it’s my own decision to be here where I am.

Let me congratulate on the book and I am really looking forward to reading it! Best Regards:”

Judit Knodel (Germany, Öhringen)

„I really love your blog, the positive thinking, your interesting and thought-provoking writings, what is more, the creative photos. How did your writings actually help me? Well, first of all, they certainly provided me with the vision that there is always a solution and things can be viewed from a different angle. I’m keen on reading your writings. I wish you all the best for the book, I love the cover. The thought soothes me a bit that great relief is provided by the whispering, fragrance, sight of the sea and it gets me out of the rat-race. Maybe I should travel somewhere.”

Edit Sátor (Slovakia)

„Moving abroad had been one of my most exciting ideas until the grey weekdays arrived. It is getting more and more difficult for me to bear the thought that, although I am Hungarian, still I am not.

I turned into this strange hybrid that, besides its Hungarian origin, has already a lot of English features as well. I have always thought I am a freak, and I am the only one with such feelings. Then I started reading Ivett’s writings and it helped me a lot to put this hybrid to the right place inside. It helped me a lot not to feel alone, and accept that this is a natural process that a lot of us undergo.”

Ica (England)

„These are really good writings, they open our eyes about the fact that taking a job and living abroad is not only about pink dreams. It is worth reading for those who are thinking of living abroad. We can get a lot of useful advice and we can get to know what feelings we will face with.”

Krisztina Lehel (Budapest)

„Dear Readers, who are reading my lines, you must know something: Reading Ivett Schrammel, the psychologist’s thoughts and advice gave as much warmth as the first sunrays in a harsh, freezing winter day!”

F. K. (Emőd)

„Dear Ivett! I love your writings, they are full of lessons, thought-provoking and show the right way to many people. In this world such experts are badly needed. In this distorted world, when the main focus is on material values, it is good that there is somebody who brings people back to reality. I wish you good health so that we can continue reading your writings for a long time and you can help a lot of people who are lost. Yours sincerely, a fan of yours.”

B. I. (Székelyudvarhely)

„For me the most useful post has been so far the one where a person was digging and right before reaching his purpose he gave it all up. The other person continued digging and reached his target. This was especially true now when I came home from Finland and my flight was delayed. 10 minutes before my bus left I had still been waiting for my luggage, I already gave up hope, thinking „I won’t catch the bus anyway!”. Then it crossed my mind not to give up, what if I still had 10 minutes, there can be miracles. I started running like Forest Gump and what a miracle that the bus was also 10 minutes late, so I could catch it because I hadn’t given it up. Never give up hope because you can never know how far your target is!”

Emőke Gáspár (England)

„Besides the teraphy the blog is a great additional help for me, I can draw a lot of energy from that even from afar, I know how to „get down to” a certain article.”

Zsuzsi (Budapest)

„I love Ivett’s writings, mainly because they are easily understandable and can be adopted to my own experience easily. They approach certain topics shortly but still from so many aspects that they provide a new perspective each time I read them again. Furthermore, the ease and nice atmosphere that I felt at Ivett, when we personally met, can be experienced in her writings as well.”

T. Andi (Budapest)

I wish you to enjoy and develop yourself, and gain new knowledge while reading my book!

Ivett Schrammel psychologist

1. A Hungarian psychologist in Gibraltar

I feel I need to start this book with my own story, as, if you get to know the author of a book and her life story more, you will understand more her thoughts as well. On the other hand, this is what I find credible, as while living abroad I have experienced everything I write about.

I experienced both the sunny and gloomy sides of living abroad, I had to cope with several challenges, moving there- and back. So, I went through several hardships, and if I recall that period today, I must admit it was the most beautiful as well as the most difficult period of my life which I wouldn’t have missed for the world. If I could decide now, I would decide the same way, I would have a go for it again.

In this chapter you can get to know Gibraltar, too, or at least as it existed that time, since the approaching Brexit didn’t leave this tiny British territory unchanged either.

The beginnings

In fact, my story of Gibraltar started 24 years ago, in ’95, that was the time when I first visited Spain, Costa del Sol and the near Gibraltar, too. It was love at first sight. I loved the Spanish towns, Malaga, Marbella, Feungirola, Benalmadena, Granada, the sea, the endless sandy seasides, the sparkling sunshine, the splendid white and pink oleanders, the purple bougainvillea. The mere fact that here even the dividing bar of the highway is made of oleander bushes.

Even then I felt like moving here immediately, at the age of 22. However, life arranged it in a different way, and other plans were born in my mind, other things became more important. I graduated from university in Budapest, and I started to work there as a psychologist. In the meantime, I got three daughters, but I regularly returned to Spain (Andalusia) and to Gibraltar in summertime, and, in fact it was the place where I always felt at home.

Me and my partner had been toying with the idea of moving abroad for years, but because of the family we didn’t want to leave Europe. He spoke German, I spoke French, the only language spoken by both of us was English, besides Hungarian. First we tried ourselves in Austria more than 10 years ago, but this adventure lasted only half a year long. Although my third daughter was born there, and I am grateful to the country for many things – Austria, despite all its beauties, is not my cup of tea.