How intentional self-care, rest, and recovery help create a more sustainable life abroad
I am writing this piece to normalize the importance of taking time off.
I am taking one week off work for vacation, and it made me reflect on how important intentional rest and self-care are for people like me who are high functioning, self-employed, and constantly adapting to life abroad.
Many high-functioning expats and digital nomads — especially those running businesses, freelancing, parenting abroad, caregiving, or adjusting to life in a new country — become so focused on managing responsibilities, maintaining stability, and keeping life moving that their own rest, care, and recovery slowly move to the bottom of the priority list.
You may worry that taking an intentional break could mean falling behind — financially, professionally, socially, or personally — in the life you have worked hard to build abroad.
Over time, it can seem surprisingly easy to stay productive, capable, and outwardly functional while running on exhaustion.
This leads many high-functioning people to view self-care as something they will “get to later.”
After the next deadline.
After things calm down.
After business becomes more stable.
After family goes home.
After life feels less overwhelming.
But expat and digital nomad life rarely stays fully stable for long.
Living abroad means constantly adapting to new environments, routines, social norms, systems, and uncertainty while still trying to maintain work, relationships, responsibilities, and a sense of stability.
Over time, this can place significant pressure on our nervous system, emotional wellbeing, energy levels, and overall capacity.
High-functioning expats and digital nomads need intentional rest, recovery, care, and permission to occasionally slow down.
I’m a psychologist who works with expats, digital nomads, and internationally mobile adults navigating burnout, anxiety, trauma, emotional overwhelm, nervous system exhaustion, and major life transitions while living abroad. If you’d like to learn more about my work, you can visit my website here: www.christinababich.com
Living Abroad Requires More Energy
Expat and digital nomad life can feel like organized chaos for the nervous system.
Living abroad requires far more mental energy, adjustment, decision-making, and emotional effort than many people realize until they experience it themselves.
Parts of daily life that once felt automatic — social norms, spoken language, routine, bureaucracy, maintaining relationships, building community, or navigating unfamiliar systems — suddenly require much more concentration and energy.
Even when life abroad is meaningful and exciting, constantly operating in unfamiliar environments places additional demands on the brain and nervous system.
Over time, this can become mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausting.
This is why intentional self-care, rest, recovery, and time off matter so much for expats and digital nomads.
They are part of building a sustainable life abroad.
Reframing Self-Care
The term ‘self-care’ gets used constantly in mental health spaces, on social media, and in everyday life.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), one of the therapeutic approaches I use in my work, encourages us to build lives that are meaningful, sustainable, and aligned with our values while also taking care of our emotional and physical wellbeing along the way.
From an ACT perspective, self-care involves intentionally engaging in behaviours that support our wellbeing, relationships, energy, emotional resilience, and overall capacity to sustain meaningful lives over time.
Sometimes, that includes intentionally stepping away from work, responsibility, productivity, and the constant pressure to keep everything moving.
Vacations, rest, enjoyable experiences, and periods of recovery can help create space for the mind and nervous system to slow down, recover, and temporarily step out of “go mode.”
And self-care does not need to involve expensive travel or luxury wellness culture.
Sometimes it looks like:
• Cooking dinner for your partner or a friend and leaving your phone in another room
• Taking a long walk without listening to podcasts, emails, or notifications
• Spending uninterrupted time in nature
• Taking a long weekend where you genuinely disconnect from work
• Getting a massage after weeks or months of carrying tension and stress in your body
• Reading something purely for enjoyment instead of productivity
• Spending time with people you feel emotionally safe around
• Allowing yourself slower mornings without immediately reaching for your phone
• Moving your body in ways that feel enjoyable rather than punishing
• Making space for hobbies, creativity, rest, or moments of pleasure that have nothing to do with achievement
• Giving yourself permission to occasionally do less without feeling guilty
Small intentional moments of rest, care, enjoyment, and recovery can make a meaningful difference over time.
If You Feel Guilty About Taking Time Off
Many high-functioning people become so used to functioning while stressed and exhausted that it eventually starts to feel normal.
Yet over time, constantly ignoring our own stress, emotional needs, and limits can slowly affect the way we show up in the areas of life that matter most to us.
We may become less patient, more emotionally reactive, more disconnected, or more easily overwhelmed by everyday responsibilities. Relationships can feel more strained, and creativity, enjoyment, and emotional presence often begin to decrease when we spend too long operating from a place of exhaustion.
Rest and self-care are not selfish distractions from our responsibilities.
They help support our capacity to remain emotionally available, present, connected, patient, creative, and engaged in the lives we are building.
Taking care of ourselves often helps us take better care of the people, relationships, businesses, communities, and responsibilities that matter most to us.
In Closing
Many people living abroad spend so much time adapting, planning, managing responsibilities, and keeping life moving that it becomes easy to stop prioritizing moments of rest, enjoyment, recovery, and care.
Taking intentional time away from work and responsibility can help us return with more clarity, creativity, patience, energy, and emotional presence in the areas of life that matter most to us.
For myself, I know that taking a week off ultimately helps me better support my clients, relationships, business, and the people I care about most.
If you have been functioning in “go mode” for a long time, I hope this article reminds you that you are allowed to slow down and care for yourself too.
If you are struggling with burnout, emotional overwhelm, anxiety, nervous system exhaustion, trauma, or the emotional demands of living abroad, therapy can help you better understand your patterns, care for your nervous system, and build a more sustainable life abroad.
I work with expats, digital nomads, and internationally mobile adults navigating trauma, burnout, anxiety, grief, emotional overwhelm, and major life transitions.
I am currently accepting new clients. You can learn more about my work or contact me here: www.christinababich.com/contact-me
I am currently taking a short vacation and look forward to getting back to new inquiries once I return.
You may also find these articles helpful:
- Feeling On Edge for No Reason: Why Emotional Regulation Isn’t About Calming Down
- Digital Nomad Work–Life Blur: When Your Mind Is Always “On”
- Burnout in High-Achieving Expats: When Accomplishment Masks Exhaustion
