For many foreigners living in Taiwan, the excitement and novelty of learning about a new country is often tempered by feelings of isolation and bouts of culture shock, which are often made worse by a language barrier. Loneliness and stress can sometimes morph into depression or at the very least cast a pall over the experience of living abroad.
Sometimes talking to friends and family is not enough — especially when those friends and family are living across the world. Counselors at the Community Services Center, a Taipei-based non-profit organization that provides support services to foreigners, can offer professional insight into how to identify and manage sources of stress.
The Community Services Center’s counselors each hold a master’s degree or doctorate in counseling, social work or psychology, and have at least five years of experience counseling patients. Therapy is available in either English or Mandarin.
People seeking therapy first speak to a counselor on the phone, who will gather basic background information about the client and ask what they are looking for in a therapist. The fee is based on a sliding scale depending on the patient’s monthly income (for couples or family therapy, monthly household income is taken into consideration). “We have never turned away anyone for lack of ability to pay,” says Perry Malcolm, a counselor at the Center.
Individual therapy, family therapy and couples therapy are offered at the Center. Therapy clients run the gamut from people living abroad alone to children of expatriates, cross-cultural couples and spouses who followed when their husband or wife was relocated.
They seek counseling for a wide scope of reasons, including difficulty adjusting to life in a new country, work and relationship issues, substance abuse, or depression and other mental health issues. Therapy can last for as short as one session or can go on for longer stretches of time. Sessions can take place once a week or less frequently, depending on each individual’s circumstances.
“People come here for a variety of reasons and there are a variety of causes. Everybody is an individual and we definitely respect that,” says Malcolm, “There is not one solution that fits everyone and we try to be very creative and adapt to the individual. We don’t ask them to adapt to us.”
While the Center’s patients seek treatment for a wide variety of reasons, the challenge of adapting to life in Taipei is what prompts many newcomers to call the Center. Cumulatively, the day-to-day stresses of living and working in a new country can add up.
“You have an English teacher who is basically struggling to get by and the school won’t even help buy supplies like markers, or they live far away from their buxibans [cram schools], so they can’t go home and take a break. They may be strained in many ways and sometimes they are ill-prepared,” says Malcolm. Having a supportive workplace or social network can help soothe and alleviate stress, but that is not something that all foreigners can count on, especially if they have only just arrived.
Even mundane tasks like buying groceries, reading street signs or plotting their daily commute can be difficult for newcomers. Malcolm compares having a daily routine to the programs running in the background of a computer that ensure it functions smoothly; having to build a routine from scratch in a new country can take up an enormous amount of emotional energy. “We now have to consciously think about things which we had previously taken for granted, and things like work, love and relationships that we would like to think about are all more crowded in our mind,” says Malcolm.
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