Coping Strategies for International Students: A Complete Guide

Everyone tells you to cope better and almost nobody explains what that means. Coping is not a personality trait you either have or lack. It is a set of specific things people do when a situation is harder than their usual routine can absorb, and most of them can be learned deliberately.

That matters more when you move abroad, because you have removed nearly every strategy that used to work without thinking. The friend you always called. The walk you always took. The kitchen you always cooked in. The language in which you could explain yourself precisely. All gone at once, replaced by a country where the admin is unfamiliar and the weather is worse.

This guide covers the two main families of coping, which one suits which problem, the strategies that reliably backfire, and how to build a set that actually fits a life abroad.

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.

Key Takeaways

• Coping is a set of learnable strategies, not a fixed personality trait.
• The two main families are problem-focused and emotion-focused; both are valid and they suit different situations.
• Matching the strategy to the problem matters more than how hard you try.
• Moving abroad removes most of the strategies you already had, which is why it feels disproportionately hard.
• Avoidance works briefly and reliably makes things worse, which is what makes it so easy to keep doing.
• A small set of strategies you actually use beats a long list you have read about.
• If nothing you try shifts the feeling, that is worth talking through with a qualified professional.

The Two Families of Coping

Almost every strategy falls into one of two groups, and knowing which one you are using is the single most useful distinction in the whole subject.

Problem-focused coping

This changes the situation. Making a plan, gathering information, asking for an extension, booking the appointment, breaking a large task into three small ones. It works when the problem is something you can actually influence, and it is the family most people think of when they hear the word coping. Its failure mode is applying it to things that cannot be changed, which converts effort into frustration.

Emotion-focused coping

This changes how you feel about a situation you cannot alter. Reframing, talking it through, accepting what is fixed, distraction, exercise, rest. It works when the problem is genuinely outside your control. It is often dismissed as giving up, which is wrong: choosing to change your relationship to a fixed situation is an active strategy, not a surrender.

Matching matters more than effort

The common failure is applying the wrong family. Trying to problem-solve a grey Dutch February will exhaust you, because the weather is not negotiable. Trying to reframe an unsubmitted visa form will not help either, because that one is entirely fixable. A useful question before doing anything is simply whether the situation can actually change. If it can, act. If it cannot, the work is on how you carry it.

Most people over-use one

Most of us default to whichever family we were rewarded for growing up. Knowing your default lets you notice when it is the wrong tool, which is usually the moment you have been trying the same thing for a fortnight without progress. Noticing your own default is worth more than learning new techniques, because the technique you need is usually one you already have and are not reaching for.

What Moving Abroad Removes

Understanding why coping feels harder abroad stops you concluding that you have become worse at handling life.

Your automatic strategies are gone

Most coping is invisible and unplanned: the friend who happened to be around, the familiar route, the specific café. Nobody lists these as strategies until they no longer exist, at which point their absence is felt as a general heaviness rather than as a set of missing tools. Writing down what you actually used to do at home, however small, turns that vague heaviness into a list you can rebuild from.

Everything costs more energy

Operating in a second language, in an unfamiliar system, raises the price of every ordinary task. The energy that used to go into handling problems now partly goes into understanding them, which leaves less for everything else. This is why people abroad often describe being tired in a way that does not match what they did. It is a real cost rather than a failure of resilience, and it falls as fluency and familiarity rise.

Your support network is unbuilt

You have acquaintances who are perfectly friendly and do not know you yet, which means the option of simply telling somebody is temporarily unavailable. Rebuilding that takes months rather than weeks, which is worth knowing in advance so the gap reads as a stage rather than as evidence that nobody likes you.

Pressure to cope alone

BetterHelp's 2026 State of Stigma report for the UK found that 51% of Gen Z and 50% of Millennials feel pressure to handle things themselves, though 92% of Millennials, and 87% of Gen Z, say seeking support is a sign of strength. That gap adds a second problem on top of the first. Believing that needing help means failing turns one manageable difficulty into two, and the second one is entirely self-imposed and entirely optional.

Strategies That Actually Work

None of these are dramatic. That is the point; the useful ones are small enough to repeat when you feel flat.

Find the next action

Large problems are paralysing because they are not actionable. The next physical step, written down, almost always is. Not "sort out my residence permit" but "find the form and read it". The test of a good next action is that you could do it in the next ten minutes without deciding anything else first. If it still requires a decision, it is not small enough yet.

Build two fixed points

Two weekly commitments give a week a frame. A week with no frame dissolves, and a dissolved week makes everything else harder. Two you actually keep beat seven you abandon. Choose things that happen whether or not you organise them, because during a hard stretch you will organise nothing, and a commitment that depends on your initiative is the first thing to disappear.

Move your body regularly

Exercise is one of the few strategies that helps both families at once, and it does not need to be ambitious. A walk in daylight during a northern European winter does more than its reputation suggests. Our guide to balancing study and life covers fitting it in. The trap in a northern winter is that the days you least want to go outside are the days it helps most, so making it a fixed appointment rather than a decision removes the argument entirely.

Protect your sleep first

Almost every coping strategy works worse on a sleep debt, and moving country disrupts sleep for most people. Treat it as the foundation rather than the reward. Our guide to sleeping abroad covers the mechanics. If you only change one thing during a difficult month, change this one, because it quietly determines how well everything else on the list will work.

Say it out loud

Articulating a problem to another person reliably shrinks it, partly because vague dread becomes a specific sentence. Saying it to a person is better than writing it down, because a listener asks questions you would not have asked yourself, but writing it down is far better than continuing to turn it over silently. This is the strategy people abroad lose first and reinstate last. Our guide to learning a local language covers the related difficulty of explaining yourself precisely in a language you are still learning.

Add a professional listener

The skill people abroad lose first is saying it out loud to somebody who knows them. BetterHelp matches you with a qualified psychological counselor after a short questionnaire, and you can message them between weekly sessions, which reinstates that skill while your local network is still being built.

Strategies That Backfire

These feel like coping and are not. All of them work briefly, which is precisely why they persist.

Avoidance

Not opening the letter, not checking the grade, not answering the message. It reliably converts a small problem into a large one, and the relief it provides lasts hours while the cost accumulates for weeks. It is also self-concealing: the longer you avoid something, the more unpleasant opening it becomes, which supplies a fresh reason to avoid it tomorrow.

Endless scrolling

It occupies attention without restoring anything, and it is usually the default when tired. BetterHelp's research found 35% of Gen Z report loneliness linked to social media use, alongside its benefits for awareness. The distinction worth drawing is between choosing to watch something for an evening and reaching for a phone automatically whenever a feeling appears. The first is rest; the second is avoidance with better branding.

Waiting to feel ready

Motivation generally follows action rather than preceding it. Waiting for the mood to arrive before starting is a strategy that guarantees the mood does not arrive. The workable version is to agree with yourself to do five minutes and stop if it is still awful, which it usually is not.

Over-planning instead of acting

Building an elaborate system for a problem is enjoyable, feels productive, and frequently substitutes for the far less enjoyable first step. A plan you have not started is not progress. If you have spent longer designing the approach than the first step would have taken, that is the signal to stop designing.

Building a Set That Fits Your Life

The aim is not to know every strategy. It is to have five you will actually use on a bad Tuesday.

Pick five, not fifty

A short list you can recall under pressure beats a comprehensive one you have to look up. Write them down somewhere you will see them, because the point of the list is that it works when you are least able to think clearly. A note on your phone or a card by the desk is enough.

Include one of each family

At least one that changes the situation and one that changes how you feel about it, so you are equipped whether or not the problem is fixable. Most people find one family comes naturally and the other feels like cheating, which is exactly why the second one needs to be written down rather than left to instinct.

Make them cheap and close

A strategy that requires money, travel or another person's availability will fail exactly when you most need it. Weight the list towards things you can do alone, indoors, within ten minutes. This is not a low standard; it is the standard that survives a February evening when you are tired, broke and nobody has replied to your messages.

Review after the hard weeks

Once a difficult stretch is over, note which things you actually reached for. That list is more accurate than any advice, because it reflects what works for you rather than what should. Do it while the stretch is still fresh; a fortnight later you will remember the outcome and not the method. If the review keeps showing that nothing worked, a counselor reached by video, phone or chat can help you work out which family the problem actually belonged to.

Expert Insights on Coping

We asked Sarah Renneberg, Clinical Operations Consultant at BetterHelp, for a professional perspective on how students abroad handle difficult periods.

What separates useful coping from avoidance?

One of the easiest ways to tell the difference is to look at what happens afterwards. Helpful coping gives you a little more space, energy, or clarity to deal with what is going on, while avoidance mainly gives you temporary relief. For example, taking an evening off can be exactly what you need, but if you keep postponing the same difficult task every day, the break may have become a way of avoiding it. I would not judge yourself for avoiding something, though, it often tells you that the situation feels overwhelming and that you may need to approach it differently.

How do you choose between the two families?

I usually start with one simple question: "Can I actually change this situation?" If the answer is yes, even partly, it makes sense to focus on what you can do next, whether that means asking for help, making a plan, or taking one small step. If the situation is outside your control, continuing to fight it can leave you feeling powerless, so it may be more helpful to work with your emotions and find ways to make the situation more manageable. And sometimes you need both: you might calm yourself first and then decide what action is possible.

Why is coping harder in a new country?

Moving abroad takes away many of the things that normally help us feel settled without us even noticing. At home, you probably know who to call, where to go, how things work, and how to express yourself when something is difficult. Suddenly, even simple tasks can require much more concentration, while the people and routines that usually support you may no longer be close by. So if you feel more tired, emotional, or overwhelmed than you expected, it does not necessarily mean you are struggling more than others. It may simply mean that your usual sources of support are still being rebuilt.

Which strategies do students most often overlook?

I think students often underestimate how powerful very small forms of stability and routines can be. Having one person you can regularly talk to, going for a walk at roughly the same time, eating properly, or keeping one familiar ritual from home can give your week a sense of structure when everything else feels new. I would also encourage everyone to say things out loud rather than carrying everything around in their head. You do not need to have a perfect explanation for how you feel before you reach out; sometimes starting with "I'm having a difficult time and I don't really know why" is enough.

When is it time to talk to a counselor?

I would consider reaching out when a difficult feeling or situation stays with you for a while, starts affecting your sleep, studies, relationships, or daily life, or when the strategies that normally help simply stop working. Especially abroad, having someone outside your immediate social circle can be valuable because you may not yet have people around you who know you well enough to notice when something is changing. Asking for professional support is not a sign that you are unable to cope. It can simply mean that you do not want to carry everything on your own. And for sure, you do not need to.

Conclusion

Coping is not something you are or are not good at. It is a set of specific, learnable strategies, and the reason it feels so much harder abroad is that moving removed almost all the ones you had without you ever noticing they were there.

Rebuild deliberately. Learn the difference between changing a situation and changing how you feel about one, and match the tool to the problem rather than trying harder with the wrong one. Pick five strategies you will genuinely use, keep them cheap and close, and protect your sleep before anything else. Then give yourself credit for the fact that ordinary life currently costs you more energy than it costs everyone around you.

And if you have tried and nothing shifts the feeling, that is information rather than failure. A qualified psychological counselor sits outside your situation in a way friends and family cannot, and can help you work out which strategies fit your circumstances. BetterHelp members can message their counselor whenever something comes up and hold a live session by video, phone or chat, usually once a week.

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 is the difference between problem-focused and emotion-focused coping?

Problem-focused coping changes the situation: making a plan, gathering information, asking for an extension, breaking a large task into smaller ones. Emotion-focused coping changes how you feel about a situation you cannot alter: reframing, talking it through, exercise, rest, acceptance. Neither is superior. The skill is matching the family to the problem, because trying to problem-solve something fixed is exhausting and trying to reframe something fixable is avoidance.

Why does coping feel so much harder after moving abroad?

Because moving removes almost every strategy you already had, usually without you noticing you had them. The friend who was always around, the familiar route, the specific café, the language in which you could explain yourself precisely. Those were all coping strategies and they disappeared at once. On top of that, operating in a second language raises the energy cost of every ordinary task, leaving less capacity for everything else.

Is distraction a bad coping strategy?

Not inherently. Deliberate distraction is a legitimate emotion-focused strategy, particularly for situations you genuinely cannot change, and rest is not avoidance. 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.

How many coping strategies should I have?

Around five that you will actually use, rather than a long list you have read about. The strategies that work under pressure are the ones you can recall without looking them up, and that are cheap enough to do alone, indoors, within about 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.

When should I talk to a counselor rather than managing alone?

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.