Am I Giving Up or Being Smart?

What follows is how I understand and approach this issue in my work with clients.

Therapy for the question of whether you’re giving up or being smart. A life transition therapist helps you understand the difference between quitting and choosing.

You're thinking about going home. You've been thinking about it for a while. Maybe you've even looked at flights, apartments, job listings back home. Not booking anything. Just looking.

And the thought that keeps stopping you is: am I giving up?

Because if this is a hard thing that you just need to push through, then leaving is quitting. And you're not a quitter. You've never been a quitter. You don't abandon things just because they're hard.

But if this is a situation that isn't going to get better, if you've given it an honest try and the answer is that this isn't working, then staying isn't resilience. It's stubbornness. And there's a big difference between endurance and denial.

So which is it?

Why you can't tell the difference

Because everything you've ever been taught about hard things is: push through. Grit. Perseverance. Winners don't quit. The entire cultural framework you grew up in says that the right response to difficulty is to try harder.

And that framework is useful when the difficulty is temporary, studying for an exam, training for a race, getting through a hard project. It's not useful when the difficulty is structural. When the thing that's hard about your life abroad isn't a phase you're moving through but a condition of the life itself.

The question isn't "can I endure this?" You probably can. You've proven that. The question is "should I?"

What "giving it a fair try" actually means

Most people set an arbitrary timeline. One year. Two years. "If it's still bad after a year, I'll reassess." And then the year passes and it's still bad and they extend the deadline because they haven't suffered enough yet to justify leaving.

There's no required amount of suffering. There's no minimum sentence you have to serve before you've earned the right to make a different choice. "I tried and it's not for me" is a complete sentence at any point.

But, and this is important, make sure you're evaluating the situation and not just the feeling. Feelings fluctuate. You might feel terrible today and fine next week. The question is whether the underlying conditions are likely to change. Do you have a path to the things you need here? Friends, work, purpose, connection? Or are those structurally unavailable?

If there's a path, maybe the right move is to pursue it more actively. If there isn't, staying isn't brave. It's just staying.

A different frame

Instead of "am I giving up or being smart," try: "what am I choosing, and why?"

Going home can be a choice toward something, reconnecting with people you love, rebuilding a career, regaining a sense of identity. That's not giving up. That's choosing.

Staying can also be a choice, committing to building something new, honoring a relationship, pursuing an opportunity. That's not stubbornness if it's intentional.

The problem comes when you're neither choosing to stay nor choosing to go. When you're just... waiting. Hoping something changes. Enduring. That's where most people get stuck, and that's the space where a conversation with someone outside your situation can help you see what you already know but can't say.