Moving abroad has a strange way of making highly capable people question themselves. You may have spent years building a career, becoming independent, developing relationships, learning how to navigate difficult situations, and generally feeling like a competent adult. You know how to solve problems, communicate, make decisions, and make things happen.
Then you move to another country and suddenly you cannot figure out how to open a bank account. You misunderstand what someone meant in a meeting. You need help making a doctor’s appointment. You cannot make the same joke you would normally make because it does not translate. You rehearse a simple phone call because you’re not sure you’ll understand the person on the other end.
Professionally, the shift can be even more disorienting. Your network does not travel with you. Your qualifications may be interpreted differently. The communication style that worked for you before may suddenly be perceived differently. You may know your profession extremely well while knowing very little about how your profession works here.
After enough experiences like this, it becomes surprisingly easy to stop questioning the environment and start questioning yourself. Why am I struggling with things that used to be easy? Why am I suddenly so insecure? What happened to my confidence? Why don’t I feel like myself anymore?
Underneath all of those questions, there may be a much bigger one: who am I when nobody here knows who I used to be?
The Competence Paradox of Moving Abroad
I use the term “competence paradox of moving abroad” to describe the experience of feeling less capable after an international move even though your underlying knowledge, skills, and abilities have not disappeared. What has changed is the context in which you access and express them.
We tend to think about competence as something that belongs entirely to the individual. You have knowledge, experience, intelligence, and skills, therefore you are competent. But our ability to function confidently is also supported by hundreds of things around us that we barely notice until they disappear.
Think about everything you know how to do in a familiar environment without consciously thinking about it. You understand how institutions work. You know how formally to speak to different people. You recognise social cues. You know when someone is joking. You understand how to complain when something goes wrong. You know which rules are flexible and which ones absolutely are not. You have friends, colleagues, family members, professional contacts, and perhaps a reputation built over many years.
In other words, competence is not only what you know. It is also your ability to apply what you know within a particular context.
When you move abroad, many of the invisible systems that helped you express that competence effortlessly may suddenly disappear: language fluency, cultural knowledge, relationships, professional reputation, familiarity with institutions, routines, social cues, and an intuitive understanding of unwritten rules.
Without recognising this distinction, a contextual challenge can very quickly become a personal judgment. “I don’t understand how this works yet” becomes “I’m terrible at this.” “I’m communicating in a language that requires considerably more effort” becomes “I’m not as articulate anymore.” “I don’t have a professional network here yet” becomes “nobody values my experience.”
The experience may feel the same, but the story you tell yourself about it is completely different.
Moving Abroad Changes More Than Your Address
When we talk about moving abroad, we often focus on the visible changes: a new home, language, job, food, bureaucracy, climate, social norms, perhaps a different currency or time zone. What receives much less attention is what happens to identity.
Our sense of who we are is partly reinforced by the environments and relationships around us. Perhaps you were the funny one in your group of friends. The successful one in your family. The person colleagues came to for advice. The independent one who could solve anything. The expert in the room. The friend who organised everything.
Those identities were built through years of experience and reinforced through thousands of interactions with people who knew your history.
Then you arrive somewhere new. Nobody knows what you achieved ten years ago. Nobody knows how difficult that promotion was. Nobody knows the professional reputation you spent years building. Nobody remembers the version of you who existed before the move. You arrive carrying all of your history, but to almost everyone around you, you are new.
That can be incredibly freeing. Moving abroad gives many people permission to explore parts of themselves that their previous environment did not encourage. But it can also be deeply destabilising, particularly when several sources of identity change at the same time.
Having lived in five countries myself and worked with clients from more than 35 countries, I have experienced and observed this from both sides. I have personally had to relearn cultural codes, communication styles, professional expectations, and everyday routines, while also seeing highly capable clients begin questioning their confidence and identity after international moves.
I’ve explored these broader shifts in identity and belonging in The Hidden Challenges of Living Abroad: Expat Identity, Culture, and Adaptation.
International moves can be extraordinary opportunities for growth, but they can also expose how much of what we think of as confidence and identity has been supported by a context we previously took for granted.
You May Feel Like a Different Person in Another Language
Language is one of the clearest examples of the competence paradox.
Imagine being articulate, funny, persuasive, emotionally nuanced, and quick in your first language. You know exactly how to tell a story, soften disagreement, negotiate, comfort someone, make a joke, or communicate authority. Now imagine trying to do all of that with a smaller vocabulary, different cultural references, and an extra few seconds required to formulate what you want to say.
You are still the same person, but you may not have access to the same range of expression.
Something that would have made a room laugh in your first language suddenly requires so much explanation that by the time you have translated it, the moment has passed. In a professional conversation, you may have a sophisticated idea but need additional time to formulate it. During conflict, you may struggle to find precisely the words you need when emotions are already high.
And other people can only respond to the version of you they are able to experience.
If you cannot communicate with the same speed, nuance, or confidence, you may speak less or hesitate before contributing. Over time, it becomes surprisingly easy to move from “I am less fluent in this language” to “I am less interesting, intelligent, confident, or capable here.”
Those are not the same thing.
There is research behind this too. In a study of 209 bilingual adults, language proficiency, exposure, and long-term immersion were all connected to how people identified with their first- and second-language cultures. In other words, language isn’t only about how well we communicate. It can become part of how we experience who we are.
Further reading: Linguistic Predictors of Cultural Identification in Bilinguals.
Your Professional Identity May Be Particularly Vulnerable
For many adults, work provides much more than income. It can be a source of identity, status, competence, routine, community, recognition, and belonging. This makes international relocation particularly challenging when a professional transition happens at the same time.
Someone can move abroad with fifteen years of experience and suddenly find themselves explaining qualifications that were perfectly understood at home. A senior leader can enter a new cultural environment and discover that the leadership behaviours that previously made them effective are interpreted differently. A professional who built opportunities largely through a strong network can discover how much of their career capital was connected to relationships that are now thousands of kilometres away.
And then there are all the things nobody puts in the employee handbook. What does confidence look like here? How directly can you disagree with a senior leader? Do people get straight to business, or is relationship-building part of doing business? Is talking openly about your achievements expected, or does it come across as arrogant? Who officially makes the decision, and who actually makes it?
You can be exceptionally good at your profession and still need to learn how your profession operates in a new cultural and organisational context.
For someone who moves because of their partner’s career, the disruption can be even more significant. If your partner’s career is the reason for the move and you suddenly cannot work, take a position well below your previous level, struggle to have your qualifications recognised, or become financially dependent for the first time in years, the transition affects much more than your CV. It can change your daily structure, independence, relationships, social status, and the way you understand yourself.
This is why telling someone to “just find another job” or “be more confident” can dramatically underestimate what is actually happening.
Cultural Adaptation Is Work
There is another part of international life that is easy to underestimate: how much mental energy adaptation requires.
In a familiar culture, enormous amounts of information are processed almost automatically. You do not consciously analyse every greeting, silence, invitation, email, facial expression, interaction with authority, or conversation with a colleague. You have spent years learning what those things generally mean.
In a new culture, many of those automatic processes become conscious again. Was that person being rude, or is communication simply more direct here? Does “we should have dinner sometime” mean we are actually going to have dinner? Should I follow up again, or will that seem pushy? Was my manager asking for my opinion or politely telling me what to do? How strongly can I disagree? How late is “late”?
One interaction is manageable. Hundreds of them every week can be exhausting.
Sometimes what feels like “I am not adapting well” may actually be the experience of doing consciously what you previously did automatically. You are observing, interpreting, translating, comparing, learning, adjusting, and sometimes getting it wrong before trying again.
Cross-cultural research gives us useful language for understanding this. Researchers Colleen Ward and Antony Kennedy distinguished between psychological adjustment and sociocultural adaptation, including the practical ability to navigate everyday life effectively within a new cultural environment.
Further reading: The Measurement of Sociocultural Adaptation.
This helps explain why international life can feel exhausting even when, objectively, everything appears to be going well. You may have the job, apartment, friends, opportunities, and exciting new experiences you hoped for while still using considerably more cognitive and emotional energy to navigate everyday life.
Gratitude and difficulty are not mutually exclusive. You can be happy you moved and still find the adaptation hard.
Sometimes “I’ve Lost My Confidence” Isn’t Really About Confidence
This is something I pay particular attention to in my work. A client might come to me saying, “I’ve lost my confidence.” But I don’t necessarily assume that confidence itself is the problem. First, I want to understand: what changed?
Was it the move? The language? Their professional status? Their financial independence? Their network? The way other people now respond to them? Or several of those things at once?
If this resonates with you, instead of immediately asking “how do I become confident again?”, try asking yourself:
- Where do I still feel like the capable version of myself?
- What was easy before the move that now requires much more effort?
- What did I lose in terms of routine, status, independence, relationships, or belonging?
- What am I still learning about how things work here?
- What am I interpreting as evidence that I am less capable, when it might actually be evidence that I am still adapting?
These questions can reveal a very different problem from the one we initially thought we were solving.
Moving abroad can affect confidence because many of the systems that previously reinforced competence may change at the same time. Language fluency, cultural familiarity, professional networks, social status, routines, institutional knowledge, and an intuitive understanding of unwritten rules may all be disrupted. Your underlying abilities remain, but accessing and expressing them may temporarily require considerably more effort.
There is an important difference between “I have become an insecure person” and “I am operating every day in an environment where many of my usual sources of competence and confidence are temporarily unavailable.”
The frustration, loneliness, or uncertainty may still be real. But the meaning we assign to the experience changes, and that can create more space for curiosity and choice.
Perhaps a more useful question is: what changed around me that changed the way I experience myself?
How Culture Shapes Identity After Moving Abroad
There is another layer to all of this: the ideas we have about what it means to be confident, independent, successful, or even a well-functioning adult are influenced by culture too.
Many approaches to psychology, coaching, and personal development have developed within Western cultural contexts, where there tends to be considerable emphasis on individual goals, autonomy, boundaries, self-expression, and personal choice. These can all be valuable ideas. But they are not culturally neutral.
Cross-cultural psychology gives us useful language for understanding this. Hazel Markus and Shinobu Kitayama’s influential work on independent and interdependent views of the self, for example, explored how culture can shape the way we understand ourselves in relation to other people, with implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation.
For someone coming from a more collectivist or relationship-oriented culture, identity may be more closely connected to family, community, social roles, responsibilities, and belonging. A decision that looks like an obvious expression of personal freedom through one cultural lens may carry very different emotional, relational, or moral consequences through another.
This becomes particularly interesting when you live across cultures because you are no longer exposed to only one set of assumptions. You may encounter completely different ideas about adulthood, success, family, gender, hierarchy, relationships, independence, ambition, work, and what a “good life” is supposed to look like.
Sometimes living abroad makes you question beliefs you had never realised were beliefs at all. You begin to notice that some of the things you considered normal were cultural, some of the things you considered personal were socially reinforced, and some of the things you assumed everyone wanted were not universal.
That can be uncomfortable, but it can also be one of the most transformative parts of international life.
You Don’t Necessarily Need to Get Your “Old Self” Back
When people feel disconnected from themselves after moving abroad, there can be a strong desire to return to who they were before: “I just want to feel like myself again.”
I understand that desire. But I’m not sure the goal is always to get the old version of yourself back.
Moving across cultures changes us. Sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically. You may discover that values you assumed were yours actually belonged partly to the environment in which you grew up. You may become more independent in some ways and more relationship-oriented in others. You may change how you understand family, ambition, work, friendship, success, home, or belonging.
You may also begin noticing aspects of your original culture that you could never see clearly while living inside it. Distance gives perspective. Suddenly, things you assumed were simply “how life works” become one possible way of doing things among many.
Maybe the task isn’t to restore your old identity at all. Maybe it’s integration: figuring out what from your old life still feels like you, what your new environment is adding, and what you consciously want to carry forward.
One analogy I often use with clients is a puzzle. We sometimes approach major transitions as if we need to throw away the old puzzle and become someone completely different. I see it differently. The puzzle is still yours. Some pieces stay exactly where they are, some need to move, and new pieces are added as you grow. The picture changes, but ultimately, you are the one deciding how those pieces fit together in your new reality.
Which parts of the person you were still feel deeply yours? Which parts no longer fit? What has the new culture taught you? What do you want to adopt? What do you consciously reject? Which values have become stronger? Which assumptions have become less certain?
Over time, many internationally mobile people develop identities that no longer fit neatly within one country or culture. That can create another uncomfortable question: where do I actually belong? But it can also create something incredibly valuable: the opportunity to become more intentional about who you want to be rather than simply reproducing the cultural defaults you inherited.
What This Means for Coaches and Therapists Working Across Cultures
There is also an important implication here for practitioners supporting internationally mobile clients.
When someone says they have become less confident, more dependent, less social, less decisive, or simply “not themselves” since moving abroad, it is worth resisting the temptation to interpret the experience exclusively as an individual problem. The individual matters, but so does the environment in which they are now trying to function.
What did this person lose when they moved? What changed in their professional status, relationships, language, independence, routine, community, or sense of belonging? Which behaviours that once worked well are being interpreted differently in the new culture? What previously reinforced their sense of competence?
This is also why cultural awareness matters in coaching and therapy. As I explored in 5 Cross-Cultural Mistakes Therapists and Coaches Make, working effectively across cultures requires curiosity not only about the client’s cultural background but also about the cultural assumptions embedded in our own definitions of confidence, independence, adaptation, and psychological health.
Cultural context does not explain everything, nor should genuine psychological distress be dismissed as simply part of living abroad. But context deserves to be explored before we decide what someone’s behaviour means.
Sometimes the most useful question is not “why aren’t they adapting better?” but “what makes sense about this response given everything around them that has changed?”
Final Thoughts
Moving abroad can be exciting, expansive, liberating, lonely, confusing, uncomfortable, and deeply transformative, sometimes all within the same week. It can also temporarily take away many of the things that once made competence feel effortless.
Your language may change. Your status may change. Your relationships change. Your routines disappear. Your professional network may need to be rebuilt. The social and cultural rules you understood intuitively become unfamiliar. Even the people around you no longer carry the history that once helped reinforce your sense of who you were.
If you have moved abroad and occasionally find yourself thinking, “I don’t feel like myself anymore,” perhaps the question is not only how to get the old version of yourself back. It may be worth becoming curious about what actually changed. What did the move take away? What has it revealed? Which parts of yourself have become harder to access because your context changed? Which parts are emerging because your context changed?
You may not be less capable. You may simply be capable in a context you have not yet learned how to navigate.
Perhaps one of the deepest challenges of moving abroad is also one of its greatest opportunities. When nobody around you knows who you used to be, you have the chance to discover which parts of that person you want to carry forward, which ones you are ready to leave behind, and who you are becoming now.
Alexandra Popkova is a Leadership Coach and Somatic Coach based in Bogotá, Colombia, specialising in expat life, career transitions and identity change for internationally mobile clients. Originally from Russia, she has lived in five countries and worked with clients from more than 35 countries in English, Spanish and Russian. Find Alexandra on It’s Complicated.
