021: Will I Feel Isolated Living Abroad?

Dr. Kristine addresses one of the biggest fears about moving abroad: isolation. She explains why loneliness is not inevitable, how she intentionally built community across 17 countries, and how life abroad can deepen both personal and professional connection rather than diminish it.

Key topics:

• Why moving abroad feels scary at first
• How to build connection before you even arrive
• Why making friends as an adult is often easier than people think
• The difference between isolation and solitude
• Strategies to help deepen relationships while abroad
• Why both local friends and foreigner friends matter
• How to stay close to family and friends back home
• Language learning as relationship building
• How remote work can improve professional connections
• Why remote physicians become more visible, not less
• The simple habits that prevent isolation abroad

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

I worried about feeling isolated before I left the US. And as a recovering perfectionist, I did all the research. I went to forums. I listened to people who had been living abroad for decades. I asked every question I could think of about how they handled loneliness, how they built community, what they did when they felt alone. And then I left. And I never felt isolated, not once. And today I want to tell you why and share my strategy for building community and creating belonging abroad. And if you want to build a life that makes all of this possible, the remote income, the location flexibility, personal and professional community around the world, book a one-to-one freedom call. The link is in the show notes. Let's get into it. You're listening to Doctors Abroad, the podcast for doctors who want to build remote income and create location independence. I'm Dr. Christine Goyne, founder of Nomad MD. I've exceeded my hospital income while working part-time and living abroad. And on this show, we break down how to make hospital income optional. Let's get started. The isolation question comes up often. And I honestly understand why. When we decide to make the move abroad, we are leaving behind the familiar, our family, our closest friends, our colleagues, the neighborhoods we know, the routines that anchored us, and we are moving towards the unknown. Or more accurately, the not yet known. Soon to be known. A new country, a new culture, a language we may not speak fluently, if at all, a social world we have not yet built. From the outside, that can sound daunting or even lonely. And the internet will confirm your fear if you go looking for that confirmation. There is no shortage of content about how hard it is to make friends as an adult, how difficult it is to build community in a new place, or how isolating remote work can be for some folks. And I am here to tell you that my experience, five years traveling solo dolo to 17 countries, many where I did not speak the language and did so as an introvert. It has been quite the opposite of that. And I want to explain why, not to dismiss the fear. Remember, I had the same fear, but to give you an honest picture of what connection can actually look like when you move abroad. And so today I want to cover three things: the social side, how I actually build community across different countries, how I make friends as an adult, how I stay connected to the people I love back home, the professional side, what happens to your collegial environment and your professional network when you go remote, and something that I think gets left out of this conversation entirely: the difference between isolation and solitude, and why solitude has been one of the most valuable parts of this life for me. So just to start, the biggest misconception about isolation abroad is that it will happen, that it is somehow inevitable, that moving to a new country means being alone. And the truth is the only way you will be isolated abroad is if that is what you want. For example, if you stay in your house and do not come out, you will be isolated. But that is true everywhere. That is not a function of being abroad. That is a function of not showing up. So leaving the house is an integral part of this strategy. And everything I'm about to share is just a more intentional version of that. I'm gonna talk about how I build connection before I even get to my new country. So before I move anywhere new, I do something that I think makes a big difference. I hire a language tutor who already lives wherever I'm going. So even in the past, if I was only going to learn the basics, I wanted to learn them from someone who was already on the ground, which means before I ever stepped foot in that new country, I had already spent time with someone who knew the language, knew the culture, knew the city, could answer my questions. And I already had a connection before I ever arrived. That was intentional. And intentionality is the number one thing I want to pass on. I also joined social groups before I arrived, interest groups, meetup groups, expat or immigrant groups, uh, groups organized around things that I actually care about. Not just forums for foreigners in that country, but groups where people were doing the things I love: yoga, Pilates, wellness, professional development, entrepreneurship, wine. The people you meet around shared interests become friends faster than the people you meet just because you're both from a different country. So I would say the goal is to build connections before you ever leave. Now, when making friends as an adult, here is what I found to be true. I have made more friends as an adult than I ever did as a child or a teenager. And I really had a decent number of friends growing up, diverse friends from different countries, all the way from elementary school on up. But when I moved abroad, naturally my friends became even more diverse. Now I have friends who speak 13 languages, who live on the other side of the world, who work in industries I never knew existed before, who have lives so different from mine that every conversation with them teaches me something. The rhetoric online is that making friends as an adult is nearly impossible. And that is not my experience. And it doesn't have to be yours. What I have found is that people almost everywhere in the world are far more friendly, they are far more open to connection, and they are far more willing to help than we tend to assume. Even in the countries with a reputation for being unfriendly, and I will call out France, if you know, you know, but even living in France, I met some of the most extraordinary humans I have ever encountered. Some of them were French, some of them just happen to be living in France. The point is that in every place, if you are open, you will find your people. And what works for me in terms of practices is that I'm very curious. I am naturally curious about people. In the grocery store, getting my hair done at an event, in a class, I introduce myself, I ask questions, I initiate conversations, and I am willing to be the one who makes the first move because that is how relationships start. Someone has to go first. And I'll tell you, I was living in Argentina, and this is a country that's known for not being very diverse for historical reasons. And at the time, it was one of the few countries that had no identity-based groups online that you could join. So when I moved there, I had the intention of seeking out other black and brown people. I did not see them on the street. I really didn't see them much at all. But I decided to start simple. I needed to get my hair done. And my hairstylist was a Haitian woman who had emigrated to Argentina for education. And so while I'm getting my hair done, I'm chatting it up with her. I'm super curious. I'm asking her questions. And because I was so friendly during that appointment and we had connected by the end, she said to me, you know, there's a group of black women here. They're professionals and they don't advertise anyone joining their group, but I know them personally because some of them are my clients, and I can connect you with them. That conversation and connection completely changed my perspective and experience of living in Argentina. I met these incredible women from the US who were entrepreneurs. Some of them had literally built factories in Argentina. And they were all different types of professionals and therapists, and some were moms, and some were married to Argentines, and just a beautiful, diverse group of folks that helped to create the balance along with all the locals there that I grew to know and love. And so I just want to show you how being intentional in every conversation and every experience that you have, where you get to connect with someone, can lead you closer and closer to having a friend and finding your people, no matter where you go. I am also an introvert. So I want to be clear about that. I did not create this lifestyle because I just love socializing and going to parties. I have never loved parties, not even when I was 18 in college. Okay. I do it because I really love deep connection, one-on-one conversations, small intimate groups, genuine exchange. And that kind of connection is available everywhere you are willing to be outside and look for it. And as an introvert, I'll say like transparently, I do have to be intentional about showing up because the truth is I could stay home and enjoy it completely. I love being alone. Like I could spend an entire day by myself and feel completely full. And that is not isolation. For me, that is restoration. Solitude is a choice. Chosen, intentional time with yourself. And what I want to also say clearly is that isolation is also a choice. It is not something that happens to you, it is a consequence of not being intentional about creating connection. And loneliness is a feeling that comes from a thought. I am lonely is usually the thought that creates that feeling. And that thought, I am lonely, it can follow you into a crowded hospital, into a marriage, into a life that looks very full from the outside. And it can be completely absent in a new country where you don't know anyone if you are present and intentional about who you are, where you are, and whose you are. So my recent Vipassana retreat, where I spent 10 days in silence, that was chosen solitude at its most deliberate. And it was life-changing and life-giving for me. And so aloneness doesn't have to be a problem to solve, it can actually be a resource. And building a life abroad can give you more access to that opportunity than almost any other. One strategy that I also have as a nomad, and so this is more for people who may not plan to settle only in one country, but may want to travel to multiple countries or live in more than one country. I actually have a returning pattern. So I explore new countries every year, but I also circle back to the places where I have already built connection. The countries I love the most, where I have made the deepest friendships. I keep going back to them. And every time I return, the connection deepens. Instead of trying to build deep relationships in every place all at once, I am building them incrementally over time by returning. And it means that I'm always arriving somewhere where people already know me, somewhere where someone will pick me up from the airport. Someone who I will text the moment I land. That is actually a goal of mine. Every time I live in a new country, I want to leave with a connection that is so deep that when I come back, that person is genuinely excited to see me and pick me up from the airport. And it happens every time. Another thing that I do is I always make two types of friends in every country. I have learned to be very intentional about having these two types of friends wherever I live: foreigner friends and local friends. They give you different things. So local friends know the culture from the inside. They can help you navigate in ways that no foreigner can. They give you information about safety, about context, about how things actually work in that place. And over time, and as your language improves there, they bring you deeper and deeper into the local world. Foreigner friends, other expats, they understand the particular experience of being between worlds. They share the emotional terrain of this life abroad in a way that locals often cannot. But I'll tell you that my deepest friendships have come from both communities of folks. I still talk to people I met in digital nomad groups years ago. I spent two hours on Zoom the other night just catching up with one of them, right? Like that's how real those connections became. And I have found that mixed groups really can give you the richest experience. Groups that have foreigners and locals together sharing information, sharing perspectives, building a kind of cultural fluency that neither group alone can offer. Now, when it comes to staying connected to family and friends back home, I have found this to be easier than I ever expected. First, there's FaceTime and there's WhatsApp. But I also happen to have family and close friends that love to travel. So the longest I've probably gone without seeing someone that I care about in the last five years is probably three months. And usually it's less than that. Whether it is someone that I've known back in the US before I ever moved abroad, or maybe someone that I met in a different part of my travels abroad that I'm re-initiating contact with years later. But when it comes to family, you know, I talk to my mom every week. My closest friends and I talk almost every day, if not every day. So when I'm going somewhere and my siblings or my friends or my parents, they want to be there, they come. And we have ended up in more countries together than we ever would have if I stayed living in DC. We meet in the US a couple times a year. We meet abroad at least two or three times a year. And in some years, this is similar to one of those years, we meet every month. So the distance did not create separation. In some ways, it really created more intentionality because we actually plan to be together rather than assuming proximity will do that work. Now, when it comes to language, I only speak two languages, Spanish and English. That is it. And it has not stopped me from connecting deeply in any of the 17 countries that I've lived in, including Georgia, where they have three alphabets. Okay, I didn't learn any of them. But what I do is start learning the basics before I arrive. I get a tutor, like I mentioned. I practice when I am out in shops, at markets, in classes. I make mistakes and I keep going. Language learning is relationship building. The connections are what motivate you to learn. And the learning deepens the connections in return. The deeper that you go in a language, the deeper into the local culture you can go. I am now part of groups, multiple groups, where I am the only foreigner. And it's not because I'm perfectly fluent in their language, but because I've spent enough time building trust and showing up that people in the group became comfortable inviting me in and including me. And that could take time, but it's very possible. And it starts with showing up imperfectly. Okay, so for the professional side, let me address this other dimension of concern about being alone. Because for physicians, isolation is not only a social concern. For us, it can also be a professional one. Will I lose my collegial environment? Will I miss the collaboration, the hallway conversations, the case consultations, the sense of being part of a professional community? And my honest answer is I never missed it in the way that I expected to. And I think I know why. Most of the collegial environment inside hospitals is rushed. Conversations happening in hallways, between patients, catching someone at the water cooler while you're both late to somewhere else, maybe between writing notes, everything at a fast pace. And when I left that and actually had time, like controlled my schedule and had leisure time, my professional connections became deeper, not shallower, because I could actually have conversations. I could be fully present during those conversations. I could choose who I wanted to connect with and why. And I also want to say something about meetings. I really value my time. And a lot of what passes for collegial environments in hospitals is a lot of meetings, and many of them not particularly useful. That is something that I do not miss. So to stay professionally connected, at least once or twice a year, I make it a point of being in person with other physicians. Most times in my subspecialty, that really matters to me. I think it's important for collegial connection, for staying current in my field and for the work that I do with Nomad MD, also supporting other physicians means being in community with a diverse group of physicians. Beyond that, I also have my own network in my field. When I need a consultation, I know who to call. I pick up the phone and call them. Not because they're down the hallway from me, but because we have a relationship. The relationship is what makes the consultation feasible and easy. And you can build and maintain those relationships whether you are in the same building or you are on the other side of the world. I am also more professionally stimulated now than I ever was inside the hospital because building a business forces you to meet people. It forces you to build relationships across industries, across specialties, across geographies. And the professional world I inhabit now, it's larger, is more diverse, and it is more interesting than anything I had access to inside the hospital. Not despite being remote, but because of being remote. And when it comes to professional visibility, you know, I hear this fear often. If I go remote, I will become professionally, you know, invisible. I will be left behind. People will forget about me. And I think the opposite is almost certainly true. When the institution is no longer controlling your calendar and telling you where to be. And when you are building something on your own terms, the number one thing you need is connections and network. That is how you build the work. That is how contracts come. That is how referrals happen. And that is how opportunities find you. And so you will know more people as a remote physician than you did as a hospital physician. Not just the same people from before, though you will keep those connections, but people from every institution you trained in, every place you've lived, every country you have spent time in, your network becomes global. Your professional world expands and your skills of connection, the muscle of building and maintaining relationships gets stronger every month, every year. Professional invisibility is what happens when you are inside an institution doing great work under their name without establishing your own. But having remote work, having your own business can be an opportunity for your name to stand on its own. So, what do I want you to take from this? The fear of isolation is real. It's honest. I had it too. I researched it, I prepared for it, and then it never came. And it's not because I was lucky, it's because I was intentional. I left the house. I joined groups, I hired language tutors who became connections before I arrived. I initiated relationships. I returned to places I love. I built two types of friends in every country. I stayed connected to the people that I love back home and I kept showing up and I keep showing up. I am literally recording this podcast after a night out at dinner with a new acquaintance that I met here in Guadalajara. And she's really cool. It's kind of like dating, but for friends. And I honestly think we're going to become friends. And this is how it starts. The only thing that creates isolation abroad is choosing not to show up. And that choice is yours, whether you are in another country or in the same city that you have always lived. Well, I hope this one dismantled something that has been sitting in your way, because isolation and feeling alone is one of the fears that keeps some physicians from even trying to move abroad. And moving abroad is, in my opinion, one of the greatest opportunities to build belonging wherever you go. If you are ready to build the remote income and location freedom that makes this possible, book a one-to-one freedom call. The link is in the show notes. And if the professional connection piece resonated today, if you're wondering how to stay visible and connected outside the institution, episode 16, who are you without the institution behind you, goes directly into that. The connection between identity, network, and opportunity is exactly what that episode is about. So go back and take a listen. Thanks for listening to Doctors Abroad. If this episode was helpful, share it with a colleague who's been thinking about building more freedom and flexibility in medicine. And if you're ready to make hospital income optional, book a one-to-one freedom consultation at thenomadmd.com. I'll see you in the next episode.