Transplants and Relocating to Minnesota

Moving to a new area can be one of the more stressful life events that a person ever goes through, and relocating to Minnesota is no different. Plus, being a transplant in Minnesota isn’t easy.

Even when you’re excited about a move, and especially if you aren’t, all the stressors in your life are magnified. If family members relocated with you, they’re stressed too, which makes communication more difficult. All the while, your support network is likely far away now.

During the first few months after relocating you have to think more about everything you do. Your routines are disrupted, everything is in a different place in your home, at work, and your surrounding environment. Routines help us relax because we can function on auto-pilot much of the time. During a relocation, nothing is on auto-pilot.

When you have more to do than usual and everything requires more thought, the hassles add up and make the situation seem overwhelming. You can begin second guessing a very rational decision to when life seems much more difficult, which it often does during the first months after you relocate.

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Are you second guessing your move to Minnesota, or having relationship difficulties as a transplant in Minnesota?

If you’re married, there can be tension because you think your family blames you for anything that doesn’t go well because the move was for your career. If the move was for your spouses’ career, you can begin feeling resentment if the sacrifice feels like too much to handle.

You may find it difficult to maintain connections with old friends because you’re too busy getting the kids settled or working on learning your new job responsibilities. And making new friends is difficult as an adult, period. The idea of trying to make new friends on top of everything else can be distressing, especially if you are longing to go back home.

Plus, there are colloquialisms like, “Minnesotans will give you directions to anywhere except to their house,” that many find to be painfully true here.

Would it help to know this is a normal but temporary part of relocating to Minnesota?

Feeling overwhelmed as a Minnesota transplant is logical. In your normal life, you had a certain amount of change going on all the time, but you’d learned to adapt to those changes. Many of them occur gradually. If you imagine juggling balls, a normal adult has three or four balls in the air all the time and a basket full of other balls that are resting in exactly the right place.

When you move to a new place, all the balls are in the air at once.

Everything you do, from buying toothpaste, driving to work, following conversations with your family about people you’ve never met while trying to keep track of who is who, and even just putting clean dishes away, requires more thought.

Two skills can make a big difference in how quickly you adjust and how well you adapt. Both of the skills are about handling the unknown. One is adaptive. It helps you organize and deal with the chaos until your mind forms new habits that make your new environment in Minnesota feel as comfortable as your old home.

The second set of skills is transformational because it not only makes the relocation to Minnesota easier, it makes the rest of your life easier. The second one is developing coping skills that allow you to handle life’s big and small problems without experiencing as much stress. These skills can make what once seemed like mountains look like small molehills that you can handle easily.

Relocating is a major life stressor. Learning how to handle it will make you more prepared for anything life sends your way in the future. Recognizing the amount of stress relocating causes and proactively managing it will help you successfully settle into your new life here in Minnesota.

At Affinity, we help you develop both adaptive and transformational skills that will ease the strain of being a transplant in Minnesota. Schedule an appintment online or text us so we can help you set up a time to meet with someone here. Several of us have been right where you are today, and we are ready to meet with you and welcome you to Minnesota personally!