This is a transition season for expats. Many families are moving to a new place for the first time. For some it is their first time living abroad. Others are moving from one country to another. Some are returning home from summer travels and often life feels new even if you aren’t the one moving, because so many others are! As expat moms, we often carry the load of not only adjusting to a new place or new year ourselves, but helping our families adjust as well.
There is one particular thing that expat moms do during transition that makes the adjustment harder. Most of the time we don’t even realize we’re doing it. However, it could mean the difference of a smooth adjustment or a rocky transition. The mistake is comparing.
Comparison-itis
During transition, our brain immediately compares the negative parts of our new situation to the good of other situations and the discrepancy can make us miserable.
Let me explain how I came down with comparison-itis last year. Our family moved from Taipei, Taiwan to Shanghai, China. We had a wonderful experience in Taiwan but we were also excited to move to a new place. We knew ahead of time what some of the challenges and benefits of coming would be. And, we’ve moved many times before.
Still I found myself frustrated with limited internet access and comparing it to the ease of internet use in the US. I felt irritated as I compared self-checkout lines at Target to waiting in the produce section of the store to have my veggies weighed while multiple people cut in front of me. High pollution days were frustrating when my kids wanted to play outside. Although I knew it took time to make friends it was easy to find myself longing for the friends I had just left. I also compared myself to other moms here and how they seemed to navigate life so easily. I even compared myself to other how I had transitioned during other moves in the past and highlighted for myself why this move was harder. The more I compared, the worse I felt.
I’m not alone in feeling miserable in a new place. Many expat moms feel frustrated, isolated, discouraged and exhausted during a transition.
Your Brain in a Transition Time
There’s a good reason why we compare when we’re in the vulnerable time of transition. It’s not because of any personal failing or even a personality trait. Ironically, our tendency to compare is driven by our brain’s effort to protect us and keep us alive. However, these very efforts can make us miserable if not supervised. Understanding the brain can help us navigate these tendencies and put some strategies in place to mitigate the negative impact of our own brain on default.
First, it’s helpful to understand the primitive part of our brains is wired to prioritize three things; safety, pleasure and efficiency because these are things that keep us alive. Any time we experience change or new situations, this primitive part of our brain goes on high alert in case the new situations or people might pose a threat to our safety or well-being in some way.
Seeking each of these priorities—causes us to compare. While there are many ways we compare, I will point out three of the most debilitating ways we compare when we are in transition—particularly transitioning with an international move.
As we understand the brain’s motives, we can often find ways to re-assure our brains in a way that frees us from the debilitating effects of constantly comparing.
1. Comparing the Good of the Old to the Bad of the New
At first, transitions and new people and places are pleasing to the brain. It’s exciting to be in a new environment. However, it’s amazing how quickly novel becomes normal. It’s around this time that we notice the host of challenges of our new life. The people who seemed interesting at first begin to show flaws. We notice the store in our new country doesn’t have all the ingredients of the recipe we want to make. The time zone for calling family back home is frustrating.
Our brains tend to remember things in the past as more positive than they really were. Every place and situation has good things and bad things. However, in the heat of irritation and frustration of the present, we compare the positive feelings of an old situation with the negative feelings of our new life.
It leads us to conclude that the old place or situation was better than our current situation. However, this is a faulty conclusion since it’s like comparing apples and oranges.
There are a couple of tips for supervising your brain when you notice it comparing the bad of your current situation to the good of your old situation.
How to Supervise Your Brain Tip #1: Give Fair Weight to Bad the Of the Old Place
While no one wants to focus on negative things on purpose, sometimes remembering negative things can be helpful when we’re in transition. Because we tend to compare our new surroundings to only the positive of the last place we lived, our assessment of our new place can be skewed. Thinking through some of the negative things about our old place can sometimes help us be more even handed in our analysis of our new home and environment. At least you can compare the negatives instead of the positives to negatives.
How to Supervise Your Brain Tip #2: Give Fair Weight to the Good of the New Place
There are absolutely some downsides to the new place you’re living and the new people around you. However, reminding your brain of the good that also exists can help you notice a more accurate picture of what’s really going on around you. We notice what we look for. Looking for positive things will help you find them. Sometimes I’ve kept a simple journal and written one thing I’m grateful for each night. The simple act is surprisingly powerful.
2. Comparing Our Beginning to Someone Else’s Middle
The brain is constantly looking for danger—especially in a new social situation this often means emotional threats. This comes to play in many ways. One I will mention that women are particularly prone to is comparing themselves to other women.
I remember when we first moved to Beijing many years ago, we arrived to a mostly empty house because our shipment would take a few months to arrive. I entered other people’s beautifully decorated homes with Chinese antiques and art from around the world. I began to feel like I needed to step it up and get decorating my home. I felt almost urgent about it.
For some reason my brain was trying to help me by causing me to feel that to be part of the tribe there I had to have a fabulously decorated home. But, the truth is many of those women had been in China for several years and had lived around the world for many more than that. This was the beginning of our Foreign Service experience and I was comparing my beginning to someone else’s middle.
More importantly, it was a needless threat my brain identified. These women didn’t care if my house was decorated nicely. They cared how they felt when we interacted. Comparison—especially unfair comparisons we place on ourselves are often the thief of peace and meaningful relationships.
Comparing ourselves to others is unhelpful–but it’s especially unhelpful to compare ourselves to people who are down the path a bit from us. It’s like running a race with someone and starting the clock at the same time, but you don’t start running until 15 min. after the other person has started. The results don’t really tell you much because you didn’t start at the same place.
How to Supervise Your Brain Tip #1: Assess for Actual Danger and Dismiss the Rest
Anxiety around others, resentment or avoidance of them can often be flags to indicate that you feel threatened by comparison. The solution is actually fairly straightforward. Ask yourself why you feel that way. Usually the answer will reveal what you are comparing yourself to with regard to the person in question. Ask yourself, is this really a threat to me? Like I discovered with my house décor—often they are faulty threats of danger.
How to Supervise Your Brain Tip #2: Compare Fair
When you catch your brain comparing yourself to others who are farther down the path than you are, remind yourself that you are at the beginning and they are in the middle. Sometimes even this simple reminder can be enough to stop the crippling comparison or at least compare on fairer terms—like beginnings to beginnings instead of beginnings with middles.
Comparing Efficiency and Convenience Then and Now
The brain wants to conserve energy wherever possible in order to save energy for what helps us survive. It likes ease and comfort. New things are not efficient. The brain has to think much more to figure out transportation in a new city, what to talk about with another new parent at school, or what to buy at a new supermarket with foreign products. Immediately the brain sends alerts that this is not ideal! It starts comparing routines of daily life with previous places that were easier. The brain sends the message it wants to go back to the old, more efficient situation. Of course it does. It’s easier. But the comparing and longing make us miserable.
I confess I love Target. I love the ease of driving into a parking lot, running in and out of the store quickly with the variety of things I need to pick up. When I moved abroad and realized that there wasn’t one place I could get everything. And, what seemed worse was that to go even one of the many places that now replaced Target was that each place often took significantly longer than one trip to Target would have taken me in the States.
By the time I fought traffic, entered the multi-level parking garage, roamed the isles for unfamiliar products, purchased in a foreign currency, drove the cart down multi-level people walkers and got home, I was exhausted and hadn’t even checked everything off my list! My brain compared the efficiency of the new and the old and it was hard not to feel irritated with all the hassle my new life offered.
Sometimes our brains convince us that if we just went back to our old home, or our old job or our old habit that it would be like pushing a convenience button. We wouldn’t have to deal with all the awkwardness, and inefficiency of re-inventing ourselves in a new situation. But our brains are incredibly adaptable and we can often be surprised at how quickly we find efficiency in a totally new way.
Supervising the Brain Tip #1: Be Patient
It’s amazing how quickly the brain adapts to new things. We become more efficient at things much quicker than we anticipate—and it’s due largely to the brains constant problem solving to do things faster and more efficiently. Sometimes just giving yourself a few months to adjust and find the most efficient ways to do things can relieve a lot of the irritation.
I remember every time I moved I would get lost getting places. One time it took me over 5 hours just to get to the grocery store and back because I got lost so many times. (This was before the days of GPS). Finally, I decided when I move to a new place, I would plan on getting lost and allow myself several hours the first few times. It has surprisingly made venturing out a lot easier when we move!
Supervising the Brain Tip #2: Slow Down and Simplify
Over time we figure out more efficient ways of doing things. We figure out where to shop, what to buy. We learn who we enjoy talking to and about what. We learn how to comfort our children and how to keep ourselves emotionally healthy. But when we move or transition those efficient methods are disrupted. Things take longer. We can’t do as much.
Because it does take some time to adjust and frankly we are inefficient when we’re figuring out a new place to live—it is wise to simplify and streamline when you move so that you have less on your plate. Doing only the most essential can relieve stress until you feel more efficient and can slowly add things back in.
From Comparison to Confidence
The brain on default will compare the good of our last home with the bad of the new. It will compare our beginnings to other people middle. And, it will tell us that our old life was so much more efficient. All of these comparisons begin to add up to a miserable transition.
As we recognize the comparison trap and compare the pros and cons of both our old and our new life we will see things more clearly. As we assess real threats and try to compare fairly we decrease the resentment and anxiety in our lives. And, as we slow down and make an effort to streamline things until we’re up and running efficiently we allow ourselves to enjoy the process of discovering a new place instead of being irritated by it.
How to Stop Comparison-itis
- Recognize that our brain is vulnerable to comparison when we’re in new situations.
- When you catch yourself comparing, make the conscious decision to supervise your brain.
