Feeling Like an Outsider With Your Own Friends? Why It Happens When You Live Abroad

Do you love your oldest friends and still leave every reunion feeling like you don't quite belong? Like they're talking about a life that isn't yours, and you're the outsider looking in?

When two of my clients brought me this exact feeling in a single week, I knew it deserved an episode. Here's what most people get wrong: it runs deeper than moving abroad. As a life coach for expats, I see the same pattern underneath it, and once you spot it, you can feel like yourself with your friends again.

Why you feel like an outsider with your old friends

Picture the group you've had since school or university, the friends who feel like family. You still see them when you're home. And every time, usually in a bigger group, the same quiet thought shows up: I don't fully belong here. I'm not like them. They're deep in jobs, or babies, or a settled life, and it simply isn't yours.

So you do one of two things. You disassociate, checking out mentally while you wait for a topic you can join. Or you shrink and adjust to fit back in. Both leave you feeling like less of yourself.

Where the outsider feeling really comes from

Here's the part that surprises people. This didn't start when you moved. When I ask clients whether it happens anywhere else, it almost always did, long before the plane ticket, with family or with other friends. Living abroad just turns up the volume, because a new culture trains you to scan the room and adjust to fit in. That's a human need. But when you adjust so much that you disappear, that's your line.

3 ways to feel like yourself with your friends again

1. Accept, celebrate, and value being the outsider.

First, stop fighting the feeling. When I realized I was the outsider in my close Brazilian friend group, because I traveled half the time and didn't speak their language, it stung. Then I accepted it, and I relaxed completely. Celebrate it, too: moving abroad took real courage, and that unconventional path is worth being proud of. Then value your outside view. When you bring your topic, the deeper conversation, the early night instead of another round of drinks, you often give everyone else permission to want it too.

Your courage to live differently is worth celebrating out loud.

2. Change your internal dialogue, on a deeper level.

You mostly notice what matches what you already believe, so walk in expecting to be the outsider and that's what you'll find. Go deeper, too. In a simple exercise with objects, my clients kept choosing a big object for the group and a small one for themselves. Underneath was a quiet “they're bigger than me, so I have to shrink to fit in.” The moment they saw themselves at equal height, their confidence and the whole dynamic shifted.

You are big enough to meet them at equal height.

3. Don't fly away.

If you disassociate, you check out right when connection becomes possible, and connection is the very thing you're craving. I've done it too, at a family lunch when I was heartbroken and in a completely different chapter than everyone at the table. But if you remove yourself energetically, no one can reach you. So stay, with your feet on the ground. Tap your shoulders, your legs, squeeze your own hands, whatever keeps you in your body and in the room.

Stay in the room, and let them actually reach you.

FAQ: feeling like an outsider with friends

Why do I feel like an outsider with friends I've known for years?

Usually it's not the distance. It's an older pattern of scanning a group and adjusting yourself to fit in, and living abroad simply makes it louder.

Can a life coach for expats help with friendships that feel off?

Yes. Together we find the pattern underneath the feeling and shift how you show up, so you can keep the friendships you value and still be fully yourself. That's the work in my 1:1 coaching and The Co-Pilot.

Feel at home in any room

This comes from episode 117 of This Expat Life, on feeling like an outsider with your own friends. Watch the full episode on YouTube, then let's work together. Inside The Co-Pilot, my group program for high-functioning expats, and my 1:1 coaching, we get to the pattern underneath so you can feel at home in any room.

After you watch, DM me @amandamaxime and tell me if this one hit home.

You didn't come this far to shrink at the dinner table. Take up your space.