Feeling Homesick for a Version of Yourself That No Longer Exists: Working With a Therapist in NYC for Immigrant and Third Culture Experiences

Many of the people who find their way to our practice in New York City describe a particular ache that is hard to name. It isn’t quite missing a place, and it isn’t quite missing a person. It is the strange grief of missing who they used to be — the self that existed before the move, before the visa, before the slow rearrangement of an entire inner world. You can be successful, settled, even thriving in your new country, and still feel homesick for a version of yourself that no longer exists.

This is one of the most common and least discussed experiences of immigration and global mobility. At Boundless, our team of therapists — including South Asian therapists who offer South Asian therapy and know these experiences from the inside — wants to offer a more precise and compassionate way to understand it.

When the Loss Has No Funeral

The clinical concept that often fits this experience most closely is ambiguous loss — a term developed by family therapist and researcher Pauline Boss to describe loss that lacks closure or clear resolution (Boss, 1999). Boss distinguished losses where someone is physically gone but psychologically present, and losses where someone (or something) is physically present but psychologically out of reach. Migration produces a version of this: your homeland, your earlier self, and sometimes your native fluency are not “dead,” but they are not fully available either.

Because there is no ritual, no funeral, and no socially recognized mourning for this kind of loss, people often conclude that something is wrong with them for grieving at all (Boss, 1999). There is nothing wrong with you. You are mourning a real loss that your environment simply does not have language for.

The “Third Culture” Self

The gifts and the hidden costs

If you grew up moving between countries — or were raised in one culture by parents shaped by another — you may recognize yourself in the research on third culture kids (TCKs). The term originated with sociologists Ruth Hill Useem and John Useem, who studied American families living in India in the 1950s, and was later developed into a widely used framework by Pollock and Van Reken (2009). They describe how children who spend formative years outside their parents’ culture build a “third” culture of their own. The gifts are real: adaptability, cross-cultural fluency, a wide-angle view of the world. So are the costs, which Pollock and Van Reken (2009) describe in terms of unresolved grief and a recurring sense of rootlessness.

The ongoing work of acculturation

What complicates this further is the ongoing work of acculturation. The cross-cultural psychologist John Berry described acculturation as the psychological and cultural change that follows contact between cultures, and identified the strategy of integration — holding onto one’s heritage culture while also engaging the new one — as generally associated with the best psychological adjustment (Berry, 1997). The difficulty is that integration is effortful. It asks you to keep two (or more) selves alive at once, and the seams between them can ache.

The Word “Homesickness” Was Once a Diagnosis

It can help to know that this pain has a long history. The word nostalgia was coined in 1688 by the Swiss physician Johannes Hofer, who combined the Greek nostos (a return home) and algos (pain) to describe what he saw as a serious medical condition among displaced soldiers and students (Hofer, 1688/1934). For centuries, homesickness was treated as an illness. We no longer pathologize it — and contemporary psychology has largely reframed nostalgia as adaptive rather than dangerous. Sedikides, Wildschut, Arndt, and Routledge (2008) found that nostalgia can strengthen a sense of self-continuity, bolster meaning, and counteract loneliness. Longing for an earlier self is not only a wound; it can also be a thread connecting who you were to who you are becoming.

Why This Lands Differently for South Asian Clients

In our work as South Asian therapists in NYC, we notice that this grief often arrives wrapped in additional layers: high family expectations, the weight of being the one who “made it,” and a cultural context in which emotional distress is frequently expressed through the body or kept private rather than named aloud. Research with South Asian communities consistently finds that stigma and concerns about shame shape whether and how people seek mental health support (Loya, Reddy, & Hinshaw, 2010; Rao et al., 2011).

Krishnan and Berry (1992), studying Indian immigrants in the United States, found that integration was the most preferred acculturation strategy and was associated with lower stress — but that the work of integrating is precisely where the strain lives. At Boundless, understanding this cultural backdrop matters. The point of compassionate immigrant therapy in NYC is not to talk you out of your longing, but to give it a place to be witnessed and to support the dignified work of building a self that can hold all of your worlds at once.

You Are Allowed to Grieve and Grow at the Same Time

If you have been quietly carrying this kind of homesickness — for a city, a language, a family table, or simply an earlier version of yourself — you are not broken, and you are not ungrateful for the life you have built. You are doing something genuinely difficult: living across worlds. Beginning supportive South Asian therapy at Boundless with a therapist who understands third culture experiences can help you stop treating that as a personal failing. Instead, you can start treating it as the meaningful, nameable experience it actually is.

Begin Compassionate & Understanding Immigrant Therapy in NYC

In immigrant and third culture experiences, it’s common to feel homesick for a version of yourself that no longer quite exists. You may feel caught between identities, grieving old parts of yourself while adjusting to new cultural contexts. This can show up as disconnection, uncertainty, or a sense that you’ve changed in ways that are hard to fully integrate.

At Boundless, we offer South Asian therapy, as well as supportive immigrant therapy in NYC, to support you in making sense of these identity shifts. We help you navigate the emotional complexity of living between cultures. Therapy provides space to explore what you’ve lost, what’s changed, and what you’re still becoming.

Here’s how to get started:

1. Schedule a 25-minute consultation to share what you’ve been experiencing and explore whether therapy feels like a fit.

2. Begin South Asian in NYC focused on identity, cultural transition, and emotional integration.

3. Build a more grounded, connected relationship with your present self while honoring past versions of you.

You don’t have to navigate these shifts alone. Working with a South Asian therapist in NYC can help you feel more anchored in who you are now, even as you make space for everything you’ve been.

Therapy Services Across New York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey

At Boundless, we offer a collaborative, culturally responsive space that centers your identity, personal history, and lived experience. Our therapists work with individuals, couples, and families, including specialized support for South Asian couples, LGBTQ+ clients, and those navigating grief, trauma, anxiety, depression, burnout, interpersonal challenges, and major life transitions.

Our work blends evidence-based approaches such as EMDR, Internal Family Systems (IFS), CBT with Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), and DBT with somatic therapy and mindfulness-based practices to support emotional processing and nervous system regulation. We also provide group therapy, clinical supervision, and secure virtual therapy to ensure care remains accessible and flexible as your needs evolve.

Accessible Mental Health Support via the Fellowship Clinic

The Boundless Fellowship Clinic offers reduced-fee, fully virtual therapy for individuals who need consistent support with fewer financial barriers. Clients are thoughtfully matched with advanced graduate-level clinicians who work under close supervision from licensed therapists, ensuring safe, structured, and high-quality care.

Grounded in trauma-informed and relational approaches, this program supports people navigating anxiety, relationship challenges, life transitions, and personal growth, helping make ongoing therapy more accessible, stable, and sustainable.

Learn More About Our South Asian Therapy Team

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Kiara Vaz

LMSW | C-DBT

Kiara supports adults and couples working through perfectionism, attachment-related wounds, and relational challenges. Using a DBT-informed framework, she helps immigrants and people of color cultivate more secure, stable, and fulfilling relationships.

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Monesha Chari

LMSW | C-EMDR

Monesha works with adults navigating anxiety, performance pressure, and the weight of cultural or family expectations. She often supports students, creatives, and high-achieving individuals who are looking for greater balance, self-understanding, and emotional clarity.

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Dipti Balwani

MHC-LP | RYT-200

Dipti supports clients working through relational trauma and family dynamics, including experiences of emotional abuse and narcissistic relationships. Her practice also focuses on South Asian identity, men’s mental health, and recovery from anxiety and PTSD.

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Prerna Menon

LCSW | CCTP

Prerna works with adults processing childhood sexual trauma, identity development, and racial or cultural stress. She provides a grounded, culturally responsive space for international students and others navigating cross-cultural pressures and existential concerns.

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References

• Berry, J. W. (1997). Immigration, acculturation, and adaptation. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 46(1), 5–34.

• Boss, P. (1999). Ambiguous loss: Learning to live with unresolved grief. Harvard University Press.

• Hofer, J. (1934). Medical dissertation on nostalgia (C. K. Anspach, Trans.). Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 2, 376–391. (Original work published 1688)

• Krishnan, A., & Berry, J. W. (1992). Acculturative stress and acculturation attitudes among Indian immigrants to the United States. Psychology and Developing Societies, 4(2), 187–212. https://doi.org/10.1177/097133369200400206

• Loya, F., Reddy, R., & Hinshaw, S. P. (2010). Mental illness stigma as a mediator of differences in Caucasian and South Asian college students’ attitudes toward psychological counseling. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 57(4), 484–490.

• Pollock, D. C., & Van Reken, R. E. (2009). Third culture kids: Growing up among worlds (Rev. ed.). Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

• Rao, V., Goga, J., Inscore, A., Kosi, R., Khushalani, S., Rastogi, P., Subramaniam, G., & Jayaram, G. (2011). Attitudes towards mental illness and help-seeking behaviors among South Asian Americans: Results of a pilot study. Asian Journal of Psychiatry, 4(1), 76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajp.2010.09.007

• Sedikides, C., Wildschut, T., Arndt, J., & Routledge, C. (2008). Nostalgia: Past, present, and future. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17(5), 304–307. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2008.00595.x