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Get startedCoping is not a personality trait. It is a set of specific, learnable things people do when a situation is heavier than an ordinary week can absorb, and the useful ones are almost always small enough to repeat when you feel flat.
Moving abroad matters here because it quietly deletes most of the skills you already had. Not the ones you could name; the invisible ones. The friend who was always around. The walk you always took when you were annoyed. The kitchen where you cooked the same thing every Sunday. Nobody lists those as coping skills until they are gone, at which point their absence registers as a vague heaviness rather than as a set of missing tools.
The 26 below are grouped by what they actually do. Some change a situation, some change how you feel about a situation you cannot change, some protect the physical foundations everything else rests on, and some are about other people. Pick five you will genuinely use.
College Life, the global club for young internationals, is partnering with BetterHelp to support young people with the emotional side of starting over in a new country. BetterHelp is an online platform for psychological counseling that connects members with qualified counselors for live sessions and messaging. As part of the partnership, College Life Club members get 30% off their first three months with BetterHelp.* Become a member of College Life Club (free) to access the benefit.
Skills That Change the Situation
These are the tools for problems you can actually influence. Applying them to things you cannot change is the most common way people exhaust themselves, so check first whether the situation is genuinely movable.
Find the Next Physical Action
Large problems paralyse because they are not actionable. "Sort out my residence permit" is not something you can do; "find the form and read it" is. The test of a good next action is that you could start it in the next ten minutes without making any further decisions. If it still requires a decision, it is not small enough yet. Breaking things down this way is not a productivity trick; it is the difference between a task that sits on a list for three weeks and one that gets done on a tired Tuesday evening.
Write the Problem Down Precisely
Vague dread is heavier than a specific sentence, and most worries shrink measurably when forced into words. Write exactly what the problem is, what happens if it goes badly, and what you could do about each part. A surprising proportion of what feels overwhelming turns out to be two solvable things and one thing you were never able to influence. Separating those is most of the work. Do it on paper rather than in your head, because the head keeps re-running the same three sentences without ever finishing them. Ten minutes and a page is usually enough.
Ask for the Extension Early
Universities deal with extensions constantly and staff are rarely surprised by them. Asking in week six is routine; asking the night before is a crisis. The gap between those two conversations is usually a fortnight of avoidance. For international students there may also be visa or progress implications, which is a strong argument for asking the international office early rather than guessing from a website. The conversation is also much shorter than the weeks of dread that precede it, which is worth remembering while you are avoiding it.
Gather Information Before Deciding
A great deal of pressure abroad comes from not knowing how something works rather than from the thing itself. Registration, tenancy rights, enrolment rules, exam regulations. Twenty minutes of reading, or one question to somebody who did it last year, frequently converts a large fear into a small errand. Ask a person rather than a website where you can; official pages describe the rule and people describe the practice. University international offices, student unions and course chats are all reasonable places to ask, and the answers tend to be oddly specific in exactly the way you need.
Renegotiate the Load
If the load is genuinely too big, the answer is a smaller load rather than a better system. Drop the module, hand back the committee role, cut the shifts, extend the deadline. This reliably feels like failure and is usually the most competent thing available. Carrying a slightly lighter load properly for two years beats carrying a full one badly for one. It is also reversible, which most people forget. Dropping something this term does not commit you to a smaller life permanently.
Do the Worst Task First
Avoidance compounds: the longer something sits, the more unpleasant opening it becomes, which supplies a fresh reason to avoid it tomorrow. Doing the thing you least want to do first thing removes the low-level dread that otherwise colours the whole day. It rarely takes as long as the anticipation suggested, which is itself worth learning repeatedly. Doing it before you check your phone is the version that works, because once the day starts negotiating with you it usually wins the argument.
Use a Deadline You Did Not Set
Studying alone in a new country removes most external structure. Booking a library slot with someone, joining a study group, or telling a friend you will send them something by Friday reinstates it. Borrowed accountability works considerably better than willpower for most people, and costs nothing.
Skills That Change How You Feel
These are for situations that are genuinely fixed: the weather, a visa timeline, a decision already made, a friendship that ended. Using problem-solving here just produces frustration.
Name the Feeling Accurately
There is a real difference between tired, lonely, homesick, anxious about a specific thing, and flat for no reason you can identify. Each has a different response, and treating them all as a general bad mood means reaching for the wrong tool. Simply asking which one it is, honestly, often points at the answer without any further effort. A one-line note is enough. The act of choosing a word does most of the work, because it forces the vague thing into a shape you can respond to.
Separate the Season From the Country
Disliking a dark, wet northern European February is not the same as disliking the place you moved to, and the two get conflated constantly between December and March. Write down in September what you liked about where you live, and read it back in the spring. If the reasons still hold, you are having a hard season rather than living a wrong life. This is the single most useful thing you can do in September, and it takes about ten minutes.
Reframe Without Lying to Yourself
Useful reframing is not forced positivity, which nobody believes and which makes things worse. It is finding the accurate alternative reading: this is month four of a process that usually takes a year, rather than proof that you have failed. The test of a good reframe is that you actually believe it. If a reframe feels like something you are reciting rather than something you think, it is the wrong one; look for a version that is simply more accurate rather than more cheerful. Forced positivity tends to make people feel worse, because on top of the original difficulty they now feel they are failing at having a good attitude about it.
Zoom Out to the Timescale
Almost everything difficult about a first year abroad is a stage rather than a permanent state. Most people report a clear shift somewhere between month eight and month fourteen. Knowing the timescale converts an indefinite bad feeling into a finite one, which is a genuinely different experience even when nothing else changes. Writing the expected timescale down where you can see it is more effective than trying to remember it during a bad week, which is exactly when it stops feeling true. Almost nobody can name the week their adjustment turned, which is precisely why an external record beats trying to sense progress from the inside.
Allow the Bad Evening
Trying to fix every low mood is exhausting and often extends it. Some evenings are simply bad and pass on their own by morning. Distinguishing a bad evening from a pattern prevents you treating ordinary human variation as a problem requiring intervention. Not every low mood is a problem to be solved. Some are just a Tuesday, and treating them as evidence of something larger tends to make them last longer than they otherwise would. The useful distinction is between one bad evening and a run of them; the first needs nothing at all, and the second is worth paying attention to.
Use Deliberate Distraction
Choosing to watch something for an evening because a situation genuinely cannot be changed is a legitimate strategy, and rest is not avoidance. The distinction is whether it is chosen or automatic. Reaching for a phone whenever a feeling appears is avoidance with better branding; deciding to stop thinking about a fixed problem for two hours is coping. Decide in advance how long, and what you will do afterwards. Chosen and bounded is restorative; open-ended and automatic is not. The question worth asking first is whether the situation is one you could act on. If it is, distraction is postponement rather than rest.
Write to Yourself in Six Months
A short note about how this week feels, sealed and read later, does two things. It gives the feeling somewhere to go now, and it provides evidence of movement later, which is otherwise almost invisible from the inside. Progress in adjustment is slow enough that you will not notice it happening.
Skills That Protect the Foundations
None of the above works well on a body that is not sleeping, moving or eating at regular hours. These are unglamorous and they determine how well everything else functions.
Protect Sleep Before Anything Else
Almost every coping skill works worse on a sleep debt, and moving country disrupts sleep for most people. Treat it as the foundation rather than the reward for a productive day. Our guide to sleeping abroad covers the mechanics; the short version is that a fixed wake time matters more than a fixed bedtime. Our guide to learning a local language covers another thing that gets much easier once you are sleeping properly. If you change only one thing during a difficult month, change this one, because it quietly determines how well every other skill on this list works.
Get Outside in Daylight
Northern European winters are darker than most arrivals expect, and it is entirely possible to go days without meaningful light in December. A short walk during daylight, even under flat grey cloud, does more than its reputation suggests. Making it a fixed appointment rather than a daily decision removes the argument on the days it would help most. Twenty minutes before lunch is more useful than an hour after dark, and pairing it with something you already do, like the walk to a shop, means it costs no extra time. Making it a fixed appointment rather than a daily decision removes the argument on the days it would help most.
Move Your Body Regularly
Exercise is one of the few things that helps both families of coping at once, and it does not need to be ambitious. A class with a fixed time and the same people beats a gym membership you use sporadically, because it supplies structure and company alongside the movement. Our guide to balancing study and life covers fitting one in. The trap in a northern winter is that the days you least want to go are the days it helps most, which is an argument for a booked class rather than a decision.
Eat at Roughly the Same Times
Meals are the oldest structure humans have, and when they scatter the day scatters with them. You do not need to cook elaborately; you need to eat at hours that repeat. This quietly protects sleep, which protects everything else, and it is usually the first thing to go when someone is struggling. Batch-cooking on a Sunday sounds like a lifestyle recommendation and is really just a way of removing one decision from every weekday evening. It is usually the first thing to go when someone is struggling, and quietly one of the most effective things to reinstate.
Build Two Fixed Points
Two weekly commitments give a week a frame, and a week with no frame dissolves. Choose things that happen whether or not you organise them, because during a flat stretch you will organise nothing. Two you actually keep beat seven you abandon by the third week. A class with a fixed time, a team that expects you, a standing arrangement with a friend. Anything requiring your initiative will quietly lapse in exactly the weeks you need it most, which is why two commitments you actually keep beat seven you abandon by the third week.
Make Rest Actually Restful
Scrolling occupies attention without restoring anything, which is why four hours of it leaves you feeling worse. The test is simple: after an hour, do you feel better or merely later? Sleep, daylight, movement, quiet and other people pass that test. Most phone use fails it. This is not an argument for deleting anything. It is an argument for noticing which hour of your evening actually gave something back, and doing slightly more of that one. Sleep, daylight, movement, quiet and other people tend to pass the test; most time spent on a phone tends to fail it.
Keep One Thing From Before the Move
A five-a-side game, a book club, a podcast, a Sunday call. Continuity matters more than the activity, because it tells you the person who arrived is the same person who left. People often drop everything on arrival intending to rebuild, then find nothing familiar remains to hold on to in February. Keeping one thread intact costs very little and is worth a great deal during the flat months. It does not need to be impressive or social; it needs to be something you did before and still do.
Book a Standing Session
A weekly appointment with somebody whose job is to listen removes the problem of having nobody yet with your context. BetterHelp matches you with a qualified psychological counselor after a short questionnaire, and you can hold that session by video, phone or chat, which fits a week whose shape is still changing. It also gives the week one fixed point that does not depend on you organising it, which is the same mechanism as the two anchors above.
Skills That Involve Other People
These are the ones internationals lose first and reinstate last, and they are among the most effective.
Say It Out Loud to Somebody
Articulating a problem to another person reliably shrinks it, partly because a listener asks questions you would not have asked yourself. This is the skill most damaged by moving abroad, because it requires someone who already has context, and rebuilding that takes months. Where there is nobody yet, saying it aloud to yourself or writing it out is a poor substitute and still considerably better than continuing to turn it over silently. This is the skill most damaged by moving abroad, because it needs somebody who already has your context, and rebuilding that takes months rather than weeks.
Tell One Person the Accurate Version
Keeping up a cheerful performance across a time zone is expensive and removes the possibility of anyone noticing. Pick one person who knew you before the move and be honest with them. They have a baseline for how you normally sound and can tell you when you do not sound like it. Once a fortnight is plenty. The point is not frequency; it is that one person somewhere holds an undecorated picture of how you are actually doing. Choose someone who knew you before the move if you can, since they have a baseline for how you normally sound and can say so when you do not sound like it.
Ask for Something Specific
"I am struggling" is hard for people to act on. "Could you call me on Sunday" or "could you look at this email before I send it" is not. Specific requests are far more likely to be met, and being met is what actually helps. It also removes the burden of guessing from the other person, who usually wants to help and has no idea what would be useful. Small and concrete beats large and vague every time, and a request that is easy to say yes to is far more likely to actually happen.
Join Something That Repeats
One weekly commitment outperforms five brilliant one-off evenings, because closeness comes from repeated exposure to the same faces rather than from meeting more people. Go for three months before deciding it is not working; inclusion outside the activity usually starts around week ten. Attendance is the entire mechanism and the activity barely matters, so choose something you will turn up to on a bad evening rather than something that sounds impressive. Go for three months before deciding, since the point at which people start including you outside the activity is usually somewhere around week ten and most people quit before it.
Be the One Who Organises
Most people are pleased to be invited and almost nobody initiates. Waiting to be included means waiting a long time and concluding wrongly that nobody wanted you there. Suggesting the date is the single most useful habit available to a newcomer. It stops feeling awkward after about the fourth time, and by then you will have noticed that people are pleased rather than surprised. Suggesting a specific day and place converts far better than expressing general enthusiasm about meeting up sometime, which almost never turns into anything.
Mute Rather Than Spectate
Watching friends at home make plans you cannot join is avoidable misery. Muting a group chat is not abandoning anyone; it is refusing to spectate a life you are not currently living. Move the two friendships that genuinely matter into direct contact instead. Mute rather than leave, so the decision is reversible and nobody has to interpret anything. A group chat you check every evening is a habit that feels like connection and functions like the opposite, because it delivers a steady feed of things happening without you.
Talk to Someone Outside Your Situation
Friends and family are close to it, which makes them comforting and partial. A qualified psychological counselor is not in your life, which is exactly the point: they can help you separate ordinary adjustment from the winter from something genuinely worth changing. BetterHelp connects you with a counselor for live sessions via video, phone or chat. You can also message your counselor whenever something comes up and change counselors at any point if the fit isn't right.
The Short Version
Coping is a set of learnable skills rather than a trait, and the reason it feels so much harder abroad is that moving deleted most of the ones you had without you ever noticing they were there.
Do not try to adopt all twenty-six. Pick five: at least one that changes a situation, one that changes how you feel about a fixed one, one that protects sleep or daylight, and one that involves another person. Keep them cheap and close, because a skill requiring money, travel or somebody else's availability will fail exactly when you most need it. Write them down somewhere you will see them, since the entire point is that they work when you are least able to think clearly.
And if you have tried and nothing shifts the feeling, that is information rather than failure. It is worth talking through with somebody who is not inside the situation with you.
College Life is working with BetterHelp so that talking it through is an ordinary option rather than a last resort. Members get 30% off their first three months. *Offer for first time members only. Join College Life Club for free and claim it here.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the main types of coping skills?
They fall into two broad families. Problem-focused skills change the situation: planning, gathering information, asking for an extension, breaking a task into smaller ones, reducing the load. Emotion-focused skills change how you feel about something you cannot alter: reframing, naming the feeling accurately, deliberate distraction, rest, acceptance. Neither family is superior, and the skill lies in matching the family to the problem rather than trying harder with the wrong one.
How many coping skills do I actually need?
Around five that you will genuinely use, rather than a long list you have read about. The ones that work under pressure are those you can recall without looking them up and that are cheap enough to do alone, indoors, within roughly ten minutes. Include at least one from each family so you are equipped whether or not the problem in front of you can be changed.
Why does coping feel harder after moving abroad?
Because moving deletes most of the skills you already had, usually invisible ones you never consciously listed. The friend who was always around, the familiar walk, the specific café, the language in which you could explain yourself precisely. On top of that, operating in a second language raises the energy cost of every ordinary task, leaving less capacity for everything else. It is a real cost rather than a failure of resilience.
Is distraction a bad coping skill?
Not inherently, and rest is not avoidance. Deliberate distraction is a legitimate response to a situation that genuinely cannot be changed. The difference is whether it is chosen or automatic, and whether the underlying problem is one you could act on. Watching something for an evening because a situation is fixed is coping; watching something for three weeks to avoid opening a letter is not.
When should I talk to a counselor rather than managing on my own?
A useful test is whether anything you try makes a difference. Ordinary difficulty responds to strategy: you sleep, you plan, you talk to someone, and it eases. If low feelings are constant regardless of what you do, persist for weeks without shifting, or are affecting your sleep, your eating and your ability to get through the day, that is worth talking through with a qualified professional rather than continuing alone.