Everyone Says Give It a Year. It's Been a Year.

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

Expat therapy for when "give it a year" hasn’t worked. An expat adjustment therapist understands that time isn’t the variable that matters.

Before you moved, people told you it takes time. "Give it six months." "The first year is the hardest." "It gets better." You believed them, because it made sense. Of course it takes time. Of course you need to adjust.

So you gave it time. You pushed through the hard months. You told yourself it was temporary. You said yes to invitations you didn't want to accept. You explored the city. You tried. You really, actually tried.

And it's been a year. Maybe longer. And it hasn't gotten better. Or it's gotten better in some measurable ways, you know where the grocery store is, you have a few acquaintances, you've figured out the transit system, but the feeling hasn't changed. The flatness. The disconnection. The persistent sense that this isn't your life.

Now you're stuck, because the timeline was supposed to be the answer. If you just waited long enough, something would click. It didn't click. And nobody told you what to do if the waiting doesn't work.

Why the timeline promise fails

"Give it a year" assumes that time itself is the active ingredient. That exposure to a new place eventually produces belonging, the way exposure to a language eventually produces fluency.

But belonging doesn't work like that. Time helps, but only if the conditions for belonging are present. If you have opportunities to form real connections, if you have access to meaningful activity, if your basic needs for competence and autonomy are being met, then yes, time helps those things deepen.

If those conditions aren't there, time just means you've been waiting longer. A year of isolation doesn't become connection at month thirteen. A year of identity loss doesn't spontaneously resolve on its anniversary.

The guilt of the expired timeline

The worst part might be what happens to your self-narrative when the timeline runs out. Before, you could tell yourself: "I'm still adjusting." That story made the struggle temporary, manageable, normal. Now the story has to change, and the new version is scarier: "Maybe this isn't an adjustment problem. Maybe this is just how it is here for me."

And that thought brings guilt. If it's not going to get better with time, then either you have to change something, which feels like admitting failure, or you have to accept this as your life. Neither option feels acceptable, so you do nothing and the waiting continues, but now without the hope that was making it bearable.

What to do when waiting hasn't worked

Stop waiting. Not in the sense of packing your bags, in the sense of abandoning the passive strategy. Waiting is a strategy, and it's the one you were told to use, and it didn't work. That doesn't mean the situation is hopeless. It means you need a different strategy.

The different strategy starts with being honest about what's actually missing. Not "I need more time" but "I need connection" or "I need purpose" or "I need to feel like myself again." Specific needs, not vague patience.

And then asking: are those needs meetable here? If yes, what's in the way? If no, what does that tell you?

Those aren't rhetorical questions. They're the actual questions. And answering them honestly, with someone who can help you see past the guilt and the sunk cost, is more useful than another year of waiting.