Summary: Great advice for times when expat life becomes stressful. Includes reasons why expats become stressed and fifteen coping techniques for the times when the challenges of living abroad overwhelm.

It only takes six weeks and one foreign language for the average expat to figure out that life overseas is not for the faint of heart. The non expat back home tending to their own home might scoff at that remark, knowing that some of us abroad have deliberately outsourced our old domestic selves to household help in exchange for a life of unemployment and play groups.

So I've learned to keep my complaining local, where my problems are more "appreciated". And, let me stress, I've had plenty of problems and a surprising amount of appreciation. In my first year and half in Latin America, I've gone through three generations of Christmas ornament eating rats; one landlord with brain chemistry issues; three ruptured house water lines which led to a total of two week without hot water -- in the wintertime; spontaneous electrical blackouts in only one half of the house that keep us on our toes (and knees) searching for extension cords; a stubborn roof leak that found its way to my office printer (which hasn't printed the same since) and, after almost a full year of living without Dr Pepper and Cool Whip, the ants that emerge without notice or a predictable schedule from the cracks in my floors, invaded my yet untouched, you-can't- buy-'em-here Tootsie Roll Pops. By the time my first home leave came to be, my sanity was hanging by a very, very thin thread.

What is stress?

According to thinkquest.org "stress is a particular pattern of disturbing psychological and physiological reactions that occur when an environment event threatens important motives and taxes one's ability to cope.

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About the Author Heather Domnick is a freelance writer and mother of three Third Culture Kids who over the past thirty years has traversed the globe from the seas of Lima, Peru to the islands of Indonesia, discovering first hand that there's a whole lot of living outside of Central Illinois.

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