Maintain Your Edge Abroad: Elite Performance Coach on the Tradeoffs you Cannot Afford To Make
House Of Peregrine (01:03)
back to the House of Peregrine podcast. I'm your host, Mickelle Weber. And today I'm speaking with Karina Lagareff, a returning guest who is a psychologist and elite performance coach and PhD candidate with over 15 years of experience supporting people whose lives play out under pressure, publicly, professionally, and personally abroad. In her practice, Karina works with creatives, diplomats, public figures, and high achieving individuals
navigating the emotional complexities of international life, career transitions, and cultural dislocation. Her approach is both discreet and deeply informed, grounded in trauma awareness, cultural sensitivity, and an understanding of what it means to carry emotional burdens that are always visible on the outside, but still take their toll. Thank you so much for joining us today. Feel free to like and subscribe wherever you listen. It helps us out a bunch. Even leave a comment. We read each one.
Thank you so much for joining us today, Karina. such a pleasure to have you back.
House Of Peregrine (02:01)
I am so excited to talk to you again.
Karina Lagarrigue (02:03)
Thank you so much for having me, Mikael. It's a very big pleasure for me to be part of your podcast and to help the community that you serve so well with your content.
House Of Peregrine (02:11)
Great. Well, I listed off all of your many credentials. And so I want to kind of jump in. If people want to listen to how you got started and all that, it's a great story. They can go to the podcast we did previously. We'll put it in below in the show notes. But today I wanted to bring you back on because you're speaking at the forefront of things that are very relevant for the international community, of course, but
your expertise overlaps in a very interesting way. And so I want to start with your PhD you are a candidate for, that you were just finishing up. Tell us a little bit about that because it's just finishing up.
Karina Lagarrigue (02:52)
Sorry.
I think something that makes us expert is actually our own experiences, right? And I think there is no better university than the University of Life. And although I'm always very cautious with people that just help other people without credentials, without kind of a proper training, there is something that comes with life experiences that is kind of inexplicable in the theoretical way. You have to experience it.
thesis came after my own experience of being an adult TCK. So I'm sure that your community is familiar with what a TCK is and expecting to be fine with relocation as a mother and realizing how being a mother was a completely different story. Like relocating being a mother was completely different. But on top of that, something that I had very recently learned is that I am highly
sensitive. And it's something that unfortunately is not taught in universities enough. We are trying to have some programs starting in London, starting in California, where sensory processing sensitivity will be part of the curriculum that is taught to psychologists, mental health providers, doctors, and also educators. But I hadn't been taught about that. So I didn't know that it was highly sensitive. I just felt that my experience was different from other mothers. And
and nobody had explained me that. And of course I had my own kind of feeling inaccurate with all this being a TCK that was meant to be very adaptable and then at the same time feeling weird and maybe not adapting as well as other people that were not TCK necessarily. I like, what's going on? It's like there is something here that is not right. It's like, why? Why is it so different for me?
House Of Peregrine (04:42)
Yep. Yep.
Karina Lagarrigue (04:51)
This is how my relocation to Ireland, 10 days postpartum with my second child with a 27 months old older son, well initiated a very difficult personal process that turned out in being very interesting and important for the scientific population and community. So when I returned 11 months later, so with two international relocation,
in 11 months postpartum. I just brought this to the attention of one of my university teachers here in Barcelona and she said you need to do a PhD, you need to write down what is going on for these populations, what's going on for those moms that as yourself may be highly sensitive due to sensory processing sensitivity or other neurodiversities and they're not experiencing relocation in the same way.
they're not transitioning into motherhood or experiencing motherhood in the same way. If we talk about all the sleep deprivation, the high demand, all this care that comes together with an infant, right? And this is how my journey started. And I'm very happy to say that our first article that is a quantitative one, so based on data on numbers that we know that especially my community likes very much is hopefully going to be out by the end of the
House Of Peregrine (06:12)
And what was the most surprising thing you found from it or was there something that was surprising to you?
Karina Lagarrigue (06:18)
In the results, need to be aware that until the paper is not fully published, I'm not allowed to give many, many details. But I would say something that was comforting. And I think this is probably what I find as well in my clients when they come to me. It was the confirmation, the confirmation of my intuition, the confirmation that no, it's not the same. It is not the same and it's not the same quantitatively. We can see it that it's not the same.
We can see it even among highly sensitive people, like it is different also depending on how you are experiencing your motherhood. Expaturation does pay a toll that many people kind of just don't see and it is there. So I would say probably, yeah, the biggest finding in my research was that, yeah, it was not exaggerating because I think many highly sensitive people just feel that they are exaggerating and you're not.
House Of Peregrine (07:16)
Yep. And for you, high sensitivity included in the neurodivergent, like in the spectrum of neurodiversity? Is that? Yeah. Yeah.
Karina Lagarrigue (07:26)
to this. Yeah. But funny
enough, when we talk about all these categorizing things, right, in the main research group that we have in Europe, led by Dr. Michael Cluse, it's very sensitive, right? Because when neurodiversity, first of all, has a negative taken by the society, right? People don't like to be tagged as neurodivergent. They don't want to feel, just even treat it differently.
there is this push to be neurotypical as something good, right? As this is how everybody should be. And the more you look like that, the better. To the extent that I am having families that are obviously neurodivergent in a neurodivergent that is included in those spectrums, that is giftedness. But even that one is not kind of well taken as a neurodiversity. Like I'm gifted. I'm not neurodivergent.
And it's like, okay. So it's tricky. So sensory processing sensitivity being an environmental sensitivity, being how your nervous system reacts to environmental stimuli, it's even more difficult because we don't live in a sensitive environment. Like we live in environments that are very highly demanding, very filled with inputs that are quite intense. And
House Of Peregrine (08:26)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Karina Lagarrigue (08:52)
highly sensitive people at this point, unless they adapt their lifestyle, are the ones that suffer from this trait the most. So again, it falls again into this negative interpretation of a trait. So it is not officially tagged as neurodiversity and I don't know if it ever will. But yes, you're right, this is how I see it.
House Of Peregrine (09:15)
Yeah, okay, cool. And I think I've heard you say or maybe a study you've done or correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there's higher incidence of neurodivergence in the international community. Do I have that correct?
Karina Lagarrigue (09:31)
So this is precisely where you were telling before, right? Thank you so much for sharing the research that I'm doing in parallel to my research, which is to see the amount of sensory processing sensitivity that there is in this community that we work with, right? The expatriated one. What we see, and this was very interesting to see in the international conference on sensory processing sensitivity happening in London last May, is that...
When we look, they were looking at refugees and they can have all the data on the sensitivityresearch.com website where all the updates on research is there. And what they saw looking at children, at refugee children, is that of course we tend to see a higher percentage ⁓ of sensitivity, but for one main reason that was discussed in the round table at the end, and I was very, very happy that they just frame it this way. The tools that we have at this moment to measure
sensory processing sensitivity are self-reports. And if you take these tool into a very sensitive environment, such as being a refugee or being an expat, right? All of those negative items that will be part of these questionnaire, right, will be much more easily relatable to those people because of their survival mode activation status, if that makes sense.
So it was very interesting to see how Karina Grieben, one of the main researchers in this field, and even Dr. Michael Cluse were saying that we need more objective measures to fully understand what we are claiming that is a different brain activation. Because we have data on how sensory processing sensitivity impacts different areas, regions of your brain and have them much more activated. But we don't have that on a specific sample.
of people that are experiencing global mobility and we don't have it in a comparable sample being that they're not in a vulnerable space if that makes sense because again it is an environmental sensitivity so if we don't control for environmental variables we may have a biased result if that makes sense right
House Of Peregrine (11:42)
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. And so I think that what I see is that you are, you're intersecting a lot of different things that people, or maybe we haven't in the past considered or paid attention to ⁓ mothers being one and mothers are usually the ones that historically this is not so true anymore, but have been the supporting spouse.
⁓ in a international move if we are talking about people who have been displaced ⁓ or refugees Mothers would be in a different state. So it's safe to say is it safe to say that we're now stacking Difference and and ways of living so when someone arrives and they when someone arrives to a new country and they are maybe a mother
and they've moved a couple of times. There's a lot of layers there that they're bringing to that new place ⁓ that are not being accounted for by companies, are not being accounted for by the countries they're arriving to. What do you want people to know about that? From both the side of people maybe considering doing it, but also the side of people who are
asking people to do this.
Karina Lagarrigue (13:06)
I think.
you bring up a very important point and is that, fortunately, there are these two possible scenarios, right? The self-initiated one, the one that designed to do that, among the ones we still find many women, for instance, relocating for love, right? And then we have the one that institutions are relocating, institutions and projects as well, right? Because you were talking about also how I support some creative ones that will fall into the category of self-initiated because they are getting
to decide that they want to be in that movie, for instance, but still it's a company that is going to set the how and the where and all this kind of ⁓ landing space. So those two different categories take or bring in different kind of consequences for the spouses. Sometimes they will kind of be willing to do that because there is a project where they may be also
getting a benefit from or whatever. But then some other times it's all based on good faith, on love, on hope, on all these, well, let's do it, let's go for it, right? This sense of adventure sometimes as well, right? We know that expats are much more open-minded. They have a trait of personality that are much more open-minded, right? They have this sense of curiosity much more developed. So all these scenarios sometimes...
make a little bit invisible what you were talking about all these challenges all these invisible layers of complexity that come with it that yes sure you're going for the project the project is great or yes sure you're going for love and the love seems to be a very good reason to move abroad and so on but we don't think about all those other little details i have to do with more political states like as you were saying what are your rights when you land in that
country beyond the project, beyond the project being the one that you're establishing with the company. And perhaps, I don't know, you're made redundant abroad and you're not thinking about the return tickets. Like, how is it if I'm made redundant, I don't know, in the Emirates? How is it if I am there stuck with my family? Yes, great. They helped me with the relocation. But what about the return? What about coming back? What about a
person that relocates for love and builds up a family abroad and separate. What about them? What about their financial situation but not only their financial situation but their emotional situation? What is it going to be to on top of it not have any more family reunions because they are your exes so you're not going to birthday parties anymore. You're not going to Christmas with your ex's family so you have either to go by yourself back home for holiday
or have your children to go back home and then miss on some of the traditions that were in the place where they were developing. And we don't talk about that enough. We don't talk about how it is to take the full picture into account for both the two of them, the couple, as I was saying, they may be both finding themselves redundant in a country where they're both expats and they don't have any return tickets or when there is a separation.
of the two of them. And I think those are very complex situations that unfortunately are not spoken enough when considering moving abroad.
House Of Peregrine (16:40)
Yeah, I think the way I frame it is that you are lucky, but you're also you're playing in new levels of vulnerability you've maybe never experienced or have thought of or have accounted for. And so we've we've done a lot this last season on the podcast to try and get people to think through that, to have new agreements, to use the wisdom of the collective to ask the right questions, because I don't think anyone sets out to
to not know these things, but it just happens. You're putting yourself in an, I like to call it like an exercise in vulnerability. It's like a trust fall, especially as a couple or as a family. And so that, or as an individual with a company, it's a big trust fall. so treating it as such is wise, I think. And emotionally is actually, financially is one way to look at it, but then emotionally you are,
The ripple effects into your family are, again, there's a lot of strengths, there's a lot of great things going on. But how, we talked about this a bit previously, but I would love for you to give us a way, are there ways to kind of minimize emotionally the, ⁓ potentially some of the more common pitfalls or damage that's done in families? Is there any wisdom you have there?
Karina Lagarrigue (18:02)
And I think every time more, think companies are aware of what you're saying, the emotional toll that it takes to relocate families, relocate people. And unfortunately, I don't think they take it kind of early enough. They are kind of still in the interventional part is not something that they, I don't know, project. Yeah, just just just claim, hey, we are the kind of company that will support you from your home country.
House Of Peregrine (18:24)
preventatively.
Karina Lagarrigue (18:32)
to the, no, they don't, they say, have great services, but they're kind of hidden in the packages and you don't exactly know what they are and you have to go and get it. So it is very sensitive. And I think there is this lack of awareness that we have more and more problems in mental health in, in adolescence and childhood. It's increasing crazily. And something that I am trying to bring to the awareness of the society in general is that, of course.
Like we are experiencing the challenges of relocation at all levels. Like there are many more people moving abroad, but there many more people experiencing people coming from abroad as well and being impacted by those that are arriving, arriving and bringing on new culture habits or rituals, new outfits, new understanding of the culture. Like all of those things are impacting us so much and we're not having a guidance.
There is no guidance in how educators should navigate. And I talk, of course, I have many more international students, right, in international schools. But unfortunately, it happens also in regular countryside schools where they will have immigrants coming and impacting all those areas and having a final impact on their emotional well-being, on sense of belonging, on this sense of identity. I keep hearing how more and more
teenagers are having these fluid identities? Of course! How wouldn't they? TCKs are not the exception anymore. We are a growing community that we need to understand much better. But then, next to those children, there are very high demanded and unstable parents. With no guidance either. No guidance to understand what I just talked to you about.
House Of Peregrine (20:03)
Yep. Yep.
Karina Lagarrigue (20:27)
my children are not fully Argentinians anymore because they're growing in Spain or they are not fully Arabics anymore because I'm a diplomat and they live in seven different countries where perhaps they had different inputs in religion, costume, cultures, etc. So all of those things are not even being educated to the parents. But on top of it, they're not giving the space for the parents to process it like
The first ones that are in a very vulnerable place are those parents because they are also in this survival mode, in these very high demanded job positions where they don't even have the time to understand what is going on for them, let alone for the couple, let alone their intimacy.
House Of Peregrine (21:14)
Yeah. Yeah. And this, I want to wrap this up really quick because I want to get to the next thing there. I have to say there are so many subjects that you are an expert on that I want to bring to our audience. So I wanted to say two things. The first is this was my journey of coming up with House of Peregrine. Peregrine is that that identity of not of being a mix of identities just to make sense of it for myself and to bring awareness and advice and culture to this. so
whatever identity you find or make or create, do you think that's one way to inoculate, is to identify that you are some turning into something else? Is that one way, an awareness you can have that might make things seem a little less lonely?
Karina Lagarrigue (22:02)
I do think that finding people that can name what you're going through helps a lot. We have a very good psychiatrist in Spain, Mariam Rojas, and she says that understanding is the beginning of healing. Like when you understand what you're going through, when you understand that there are other people going through what you're going through, that it is okay to feel how you feel.
this is something that already starts the journey in a different way. Like you don't have all this adelaide. I always tell my clients how much kind of telling yourself that you shouldn't be feeling that is helping you. Because I don't see the point.
House Of Peregrine (22:46)
Yeah,
you live in Europe, you're making a million dollars a year, whatever it is, you should feel lucky is something that we don't only hear from the outside, but we internalize on the inside. You're living your dream life. You get to move every two years. Whatever it is, you didn't die in the war. It's an incredible thing that, ⁓ for me at least,
the dark side of gratitude can be something that ⁓ holds us back.
Karina Lagarrigue (23:23)
Yeah, absolutely.
other day I was listening to ⁓ a latest research that was published on a TCK podcast that she just interviewed many TCKs, And in the diplomat, precisely in the diplomat area. And they were talking about this burden of this assumed privilege and what we call the feeling norms, right? All this, there are some feelings that are allowed that you can feel that you are entitled.
to express in a certain way, but there are others that don't belong to you. You don't have nor the permission to feel, let alone express it, and especially not in certain contexts, And this is a big toll that comes with this relocation, especially with the community that we are talking about that I specialize in.
House Of Peregrine (24:13)
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that's even just starting there of being like, you're allowed to feel all you're feeling. I hear so many good tips coming from you that you can give to your kids, to you as a couple, and even to yourself if you're alone is like, let yourself feel everything. ⁓ Let yourself change. You're going to change. Let yourself be entitled to ⁓ compensation for this beyond what you think you deserve.
be entitled to just, again, it's a big privilege, but also it's almost like, would you say for me, it's a little bit like hazard. It's like a hazard. It's a dangerous thing to do, to move abroad. so acknowledging that and giving yourself the credit for being brave and doing something that's kind of dangerous emotionally, financially, I think is wise.
And that it's helped me and my kids even to just be like, you know what, we're doing this because this is the life we want. That doesn't mean everything's easy. And that doesn't mean that there aren't certain points where ⁓ you're gonna feel lonely because not everyone in your class. Corona is a really good example when everyone was going to their grandparents and we couldn't, the planes wouldn't go see our family. So unless we swam across the ocean, we couldn't see them.
That's a unique experience. And I think people who are living abroad have basically a multitude of new experiences or they're living a life that's alongside the people that are living there. And that doesn't mean we can't come together, but the freedom to express what you're going through, I think is a really important one that I didn't give myself the first five or six years. I just thought, oh, I'm so lucky I'm a guest here. I have no right to complain.
or feel sad, my kids just need to speak Dutch and not complain. that didn't do anyone any favors. So it can exist that you're both lucky and it's hard, which sounds obvious, but I think it's one of those things that can inoculate and make things a little bit easier. The second thing I wanna talk about before we wrap this portion up and we get into another big topic, which is ⁓ therapy burnout. But before we leave this topic,
I want to maybe give people an idea of what we spoke about before. If we know we're highly sensitive or neurodivergent, I've seen a lot of people actually realize they're neurodivergent after they've moved abroad because that's when they started hitting their limits. And so is there anything more you want to say about that or tips you want to give or insights there because you do have a multitude of experience on this one too?
Karina Lagarrigue (27:06)
So I think one of the things that you're bringing up is that when we move abroad, you were addressing it as you have to give yourself
to change and now you just brought it into something different which is many things that you have already been always been just will arise and I think both are true like it will change there are certain things that are going to change but when you move abroad precisely because you're setting yourself to a situation a context that is so so at the edge of your abilities there are many things that you are that will just become much more evident to you because they are just there in your system one that they call it right
you're activated.
And that's how you function. And this is now evident to you. There is no masking or social resources that will help you to navigate it. You are raw yourself. And there you go. Now go ahead and be yourself. So I think sometimes, as we were saying, it may be that neurodiversities in nowadays, especially what we are seeing, is that they more more trendy, so to say. It's like and it is a combination of the lifestyle that we live.
Okay, there is a lot of screens that are not helping at all. There is a lot of this fast-paced lifestyle that is not helping at all. And then of course, many traits that are proper or more identified with neurodiversity, such as being much more sensitive to your environment, sound, to music, to all these things, become much more evident. But we also need to kind of test it in different environments and different life moments. Right? And this is something that I'm bringing up in my mental health best practices guidelines is that
We need to be very careful when we diagnose, especially with this community, because the measures that we're using, they're standardized and they were not crafted on a highly mobile multicultural community. And the sample where we craft and we create those tests is very important to all these numbers that you're going to give as a result of the test. Right. So I think we need to perhaps start unlabeling things a little bit and much more as you were saying, just
dignifying, accepting and welcoming whatever you feel. It doesn't matter the label. You don't need to have a label on neurodiversity specifically tagged at number XYZed to entitle yourself to feel that you're overwhelmed by your environment and that you need headphones when you go into crowds or that you're sensitive to food and that yes, you want to stop adapting to
food changes every time you relocated and you want to have a more standardized diet that helps you to be less impacted by global mobility. There are certain things that are super important to allow yourself to just be the way it is. And then I think that something that we are lacking, especially if you're highly sensitive or you're neurodivergent, is time between transitions. Meaning that we still...
pack our agendas with too many things to do too fast. Right? I'm new there. I need to do all this paperwork, get to meet all those people, get to do all these things by X because it will help me adapt. Well, perhaps not. Perhaps it will actually delay your time of adaptation because you're going to be overwhelmed. You're going to be completely collapsed. And something that we know is that in order to be adapted and
feel adapted in your body, you need to feel a brain desactivation, not overwhelmed brain. in order to do that, expanding the time of transition, and this is true for everybody, something that our research says is that what is essential to a highly sensitive person is good for everyone. Issues of the highly sensitive person, we feel it much more intensively, but everybody would benefit from longer transition processes.
Disfinishing your to-do list per day, having more time between actions that you take to breathe, to process, to acknowledge your body. Something that I see a lot in my clients is that they tend to disconnect themselves from their bodies because their brain are going so fast that there is kind of a, I don't have time for that. So because I don't have time for that, well, just put it on the side. And until we have a psychosomatic symptom,
kind of saying no, pushing through saying I am here and you need to listen to me, they wouldn't stop and listen. So most probably if I had to say something, first of all, decrease the amount of things that you're going to set yourself to do when relocating and listen to your body. Take time to listen to your body.
House Of Peregrine (31:56)
Yeah. And said another way, I would say you are doing something just by existing. Put it on your to-do list if you have to. Existing in new country, 10 check boxes, then put another three. If you normally have 12 things you do in a day. Yeah, that's such good advice. But it is, it's worthwhile to have a regulated nervous system to do any of these things.
so I want to move into, burnout with therapy specifically. I love that you're talking about this and you're willing to talk about this, especially as a psychologist yourself and someone who sees clients who are couples, ⁓ couples and individuals, think this, with this compound nature, especially as international people, I think, and if you have any neurodiversity and then any difference in culture with
how men and women relate, or there's a soup of things that we go into. So people say all the time, just get help. It's not that easy. I share often until we found ⁓ the person that helped my partner and I, we had to go through five or six different therapists. and that takes its toll. That can itself lead to a dissolution of a partnership.
And so I don't know what entry point you want to go through couples or neurodiversity or the combination or TCKs, but this is real. And so I want you to speak to it. When your clients come to you, describe therapy burnout for me, if you wouldn't mind.
Karina Lagarrigue (33:34)
So.
first thing to acknowledge is that we're talking about, again, and we just mentioned it before, right? We're talking about a community that is feeling this assumed privilege. And that's the first barrier. Like, if I am in this privileged lifestyle environment, whatever, why should I need anybody to support me? I've got everything. Like, I'm much better than the ones I left behind.
because I chose to, right? There is also this sense of guilt that I decided that for myself. How come am I going to go and complain about it? Right? And all of those layers, something that we see is that it just takes therapy to come in their lives later, later in life. And you were talking about all these different populations that I work with. Something that we know is that TCKs will take even longer.
And I just gave you my example. was like, how come am I
with relocation to Ireland if I'm a TCK? Right. And I am, I am just used to all the moving abroad and I should be just fine
On top of that, on top of having all these layers of barriers, on top of having all these barriers to reach out to therapists, they then encounter the difficulties to have a therapist that get it, that understand what they're going through, that will actually validate what they are experiencing, the difficulties that they are going through and giving them adapted tools to
lifestyle because I still remember myself when we went to a couple of therapists and her saying well just get the help of the grandparents and I was like that's very Spanish style but my parents are not here so how are you intending me to reach out to them like should I send them by plane do you know how much that cost like there was no understanding
of the context and actually in their intake there is all this lack of subtle questions that helps them to have the full context right they will go through very generalized questions and they will forget a lot of them that have to do with the context right and there is a lot of assumptions that of course because perhaps we have we have the money then yes just send them abroad what's the problem and it's like
Well, maybe my parents are not in good shape to take care of the kids or maybe the country where my parents live is in war at this moment. There is no awareness on all these other layers of complexity that are around the family. So if you add that to the fact that sometimes just like you and I, we may be using the same language, but not giving the same meaning to the words.
therapy becomes a very tricky place for patients to feel safe unless the therapist first of all is aware of the impact of being an expert of living abroad and also about the possibility of being using the same language because I speak four but I probably don't speak any of them to the level of any natives because I'm a TCK. So my languages have been acquired in context and have
a certain meaning to me that doesn't have the same for you as a native in this language or for Spanish for instance. Or Catalan. This session in specific with my husband was in Catalan all the time because I am fluent in Catalan but do I feel comfortable emotionally in Catalan? That was not a question I was asked. I was taken in as a Catalan speaker and the session went along in Catalan. there is also all these difficulties that bring
House Of Peregrine (37:26)
Yeah.
Karina Lagarrigue (37:36)
as you were explaining yourself, couples and individuals to seek support, first of all, in a state of very high vulnerability, because they will wait until they can't take it in anymore. And then encountering therapies that kind of force them to compartmentalize their stories to just use one part of the story because we identify the habitus for that, but not for all the other ones. And then it becomes an added burden.
I am just this person that has this impossible life that my family don't get, that in the couple my partner is not getting because although we're sharing the life, we're not sharing the experience, if that makes sense. We don't have the same experience. And on top of it, when we seek the help, I'm misunderstood.
House Of Peregrine (38:27)
Yeah, which can add a lot of traumatic layers if you're not careful. And so maybe, and especially in couples therapy, it's really tricky because if it's not working for you, you have to get through that with your partner. And in my experience, being accused of being too proud, being too difficult, not wanting to take ownership because I didn't feel safe,
not being willing to let go of control. There was a lot of ⁓ things that were hurled my way because I just simply was like, I know I can feel safe. I don't feel safe here. Not that they weren't great therapists or ⁓ great for others, but the level of complexity we are all navigating really does need special expertise. so when I would say how I would describe burnout is
you don't feel, you're sick, let's say, and you have nowhere that can help you fix. And that is its own level of, it can just lead to burnout, burnout. So it's this extra radio layer that's going on every part of your life. And so it's in your parenting, it's in your marriage, it's in your work, it's in the grocery store, it's in the schoolyard. Every layer of like, have nowhere, I am not doing well.
but I have no one who understands why, even I don't understand why. I'm not even giving myself permission to feel like there should be a problem. And so this can get us into some deep trouble, I think, in our population with this experience.
Karina Lagarrigue (40:11)
And this therapy burnout comes out of this, as you were saying, this trying to seek a solution to look for somebody that gets it, that gives you those answers. And because you don't find them, that's where you end up in that situation you're just describing, this additional layer of vulnerability. Because even those that were meant to give me that safe space to be myself, to learn how to allow myself to accept those
emotions to let them in to navigate them they're not doing it so if they're not doing it at some point you get a burnout of therapy so one of my clients described it that way because they say until I found you I just thought that therapy was another place where I was being hurt not heard hurt
House Of Peregrine (41:05)
Yeah.
Yep.
Karina Lagarrigue (41:07)
So I didn't want therapy anymore. I was afraid of going back to therapy. That's I want therapy for.
House Of Peregrine (41:12)
Yep.
yeah, yeah. And it's a fine line between being challenged and being, but it starts with that safety and knowing what you're going through. Not what you're going through, but also the level of complexity. And so when your clients come to you, is that the most common thing you hear is that you have to get them in a place where they're accepting their experience.
Karina Lagarrigue (41:38)
That's one of the main things most of the time. They need to validate what they've gone through. I would say the first layer that we need to kind of detach a lot of time is money and resources. Like any of my clients would just come and say, I know, I know, I'm sorry, I'm bringing that, but it's really hurting me. It's really burning in me. Like having them to stop apologizing. Apologizing.
House Of Peregrine (41:52)
Mm.
Yeah, is that,
yeah, to back up, so is that because what I see a lot, and I think you mentioned in our previous conversation, was they are often highly paid or, and so these are people that don't feel like they should have problems because they have enough money. And so that is a very interesting place. They're coming from a place of privilege and apologizing for having problems. Yeah. And so they think,
Karina Lagarrigue (42:26)
Yes, yes, it takes
a lot of time to just normalize that you have the right to have problems.
Let's let the financial numbers, because sometimes they even bring them up to session and say, let's let the financial aspect on the side. The fact that you're going to be paid three millions for your project doesn't take away that you're scared, that you're stressed, that it is something that is going to impact your family and you're crazily thinking and rethinking whether you should or you shouldn't, how it's going to impact your children. It's completely valid to have.
all those thoughts beyond the money that you're going to be paid.
House Of Peregrine (43:11)
And so that works on the other end too. You were just speaking to me about, it's usually women, but you have a client that's a man who is now dealing with that change of identity that comes from being with their partner. And we've talked about that quite a bit on the podcast, but give us some of the complexity that people who are supporting someone who's moving go through because they're not working. Yeah.
Karina Lagarrigue (43:39)
Exactly. Yeah.
And something that it's even more intensified is that you're so lucky because you get to get all these lifestyles for free. And you're going to have to say that we're quoting here both of us all the time because it is not true. Like there is all these emotional tolls that is not visible. And then all these financial ones that we say that if there is a separation,
House Of Peregrine (43:52)
Yeah. Yeah.
Karina Lagarrigue (44:07)
is also not taken into account or even mentioned in the contract of the employer that is taking one of the partners. But there is especially all this transition. And as we were saying, a lot of time is the women that go through this transition. And for us, we know that turning into a mother is a huge change. I talk about it with this beautiful word from sociology that is matricence. We go through this matricence process.
And a lot of the people that read what I publish say, when are you going to start talking about Patrescence? When are you going to start talking about the man that is confronting all these social expectations to be the one earning the money, to be the one that is holding the pants in the family and that is doing all those stuff? And sometimes, depending on the culture this man is coming from, will be even more accentuated and will add
layers of complexity in terms of guilt, terms even of shame for doing that. Shame on you! You're going to be and live with your wife and you're going to be paid by your wife and do housework? Come on! How is that men enough, right? So there is this layer of complexity that comes also on this end for men that will go into these transitions and take this role.
And then on the side of the women, course, we still live in a very inequality world where even when you move abroad and you try to get a job, you're going to be paid less. In some countries, these inequalities are even more inequality. And then, of course, there are all these social expectations of women to just do the work at home with the kids and everything, because the baby needs the mother, right? Otherwise, we would have
the same equipment to feed them. don't, right? So you should be there. And one other thing that I have to work a lot with my clients is take this should away from their vocabulary. Like there's nothing you don't want to do that you should be doing. Like let's look at what you want to do because even with global mobility, there is a lot of questioning what you feel is right.
House Of Peregrine (46:05)
Yep. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Karina Lagarrigue (46:29)
because you have all this cultural shock and things that were brought into your awareness that perhaps you were very, very clear before that you will not breastfeed, but you just landed in this country where breastfeeding is like top, top, top. And if you don't, you have all this shame and guilt that will come from this environment. And then you will be dealing with that from your environment. And then the questioning from your back home, cultural family and friends saying,
Why are you even breastfeeding and then being in this limbo space, not being understood from those back home and those in the country where you are, because you're questioning yourself in so many ways. And the same happened for men in many other ways that are still very invisible.
House Of Peregrine (47:17)
Yeah, and I like to call it, ⁓ it's a little bit like a startup. You're flying the plane while you're creating it. You're doing that with your own culture inside yourself, inside your family, inside your marriage. If you're in one, if you're dating, it's also complex. You're creating your own rules. And that's a lot of cognitive overhead. I always say it's like building a custom home instead of just moving into one.
Karina Lagarrigue (47:24)
Yes.
House Of Peregrine (47:44)
You're picking all the knobs and the handles and you're picking every single part of your life ⁓ and that it's a big job. It's worthwhile. It's very satisfying. In the end, you get something very beautiful, but that toll is not always seen.
Karina Lagarrigue (47:59)
nor understood that is different for each individual.
We were just mentioning the difference between men and women, but among those men and women, there's so many individual ones. And we started talking about the neurodiversity toll that is going to be impacting that. then also how each of them is received in this new location. As we were saying, in some countries, will be very much more demanded by the place where they land because women have higher expectations or men will have higher
expectation in that place. And then especially if they are being moved by companies or institutions, there is this that also adds a layer of different experiences because normally the employer is going to be taking care of their employee.
and many times forget about the spouse, the children and so on, especially on a kind of landing stage, right? Like what is it to land in a country where you don't understand what the person at the pharmacy is telling you, where you can't help your children with the homework because you don't understand the teacher and how it is to just mainly just, I don't know, maybe subscribe to the gym, but have all this culture shock on how things are done.
and just being seen as you're this privileged person that doesn't have to work. So it's important to acknowledge that there are differences in both men and women, but then also within the experience individually and depending on how the context supports you.
House Of Peregrine (49:33)
Yeah. So I want to ask kind of a strange question because I think you can hang with it. Once we've acknowledged this, once we've acknowledged this, once we accept it, once we account for it, is there a way to play with this? Is there a way? Because in my work that I did over the last few years with talking about money and talking about
how the economy doesn't acknowledge care work. within a couple, it's kind of a power dynamic that is, you know, it's accepted. I have to say, the most interesting thing about my TED talk is that I thought that I underestimated the amount of women who are the breadwinners in their family were very angry that I brought these things up.
because the power dynamic plays to their advantage. They're using it, it's part of their equation. And so I asked one woman, she was telling me, ⁓ I would never do these things to my spouse. He had moved to a new country for her job, stay a home parent. She said, you your TED Talk isn't relevant for me, because I would never do that to my spouse. And I said, ⁓ what if he had an affair? She goes, yeah, I'd cut him out. And I was like, so that would mean he had no visa, he would have no home, he would have no...
And so there's this, and within countries, I think it's the same. There's this built in power dynamic that is present and accepted and maybe even on purpose. So is there a way we can transform that somehow? And I know that's kind of a big question. The way we do it often with an intimacy is like games, right? ⁓ So this is why we have
So it's very erotic games, but in terms of immigration and having to learn a language and is there, what is the transcendent next step after you've accepted, after you've acknowledged, after you've taken that on board, is it just acknowledging it and laughing?
Karina Lagarrigue (51:50)
I think some of the things that...
I would say are more difficult for people and I was just ⁓ posting about that the other day is that the first step is acknowledging and then is moving into what am I looking forward to building, right? What is it that, okay, so these are my challenges, okay, so what do I want to leave? How do I want to leave those things? How do I want to navigate them? How do I want things to be for me? For instance, from a financial status, for instance, how do I secure myself financially?
when I move abroad and then it's like and what am I ready to let go in order for that to happen right because I think many people have all these big dreams at the beginning of a journey like we're gonna do it this way and this is what we're gonna gain and that is like fantastic this is what you want to get okay well in order to do that you need to get rid of other things which are what you were just mentioning right it's like well as long as we're together everything is fine but if you cheat on me well you're not a human anymore
You're not the father of my children anymore. You're that cheater that just got somebody that, yeah, you shouldn't have. And so that just takes you away of anything that is legit to any human being, especially a person that you share intimacy with, that you build life with, you have children with, right? Something very sensitive that I have, I have a podcast, not a podcast, an Instagram live with...
Patricia Papernout that specializes in blended families is how difficult it is to navigate divorce and blended families when there is an ocean in between. And how many times, especially with families, because I think that's one of the things I specialize the most, There is this completely unawareness of the children. And you were mentioning them before and it's like how that impacts the children, right? Because if you divorce and you have no children, where it's going to be hard.
and you're probably going to have to move back home or choose where you want to go. But when there are the children in between, that's not possible anymore. And as you were saying, there was all this care toll that you paid for, for many, years that is not being compensated. There is this, I am abroad because of those children as well, that is not being taken into account either. So I think we need to design. again, you and I talking about what the ideal would be and is.
We need to acknowledge, need to decide, we need to have a plan, we need to have those important conversations that I think Rhoda did a very good job in the last session of Expert Couple Summit where she was talking about those important conversations that need to happen before relocation and during relocation as you also get to know what it is like because again we're talking about each scenario being very different legally wise, financially wise and so on and setting these
kind of agreements upfront and understanding that in order for that to become what you go through, you have to let go on some other things such as, as you were saying, this power dynamic. Am I ready to stop having this dynamic where because I am the main bread earner, I am entitled to X, Y, Z? Are we ready to give up on those dynamics? Are we? Because if we are not ready to give up
on those dynamics, then we're just building a dream, but not a real life.
House Of Peregrine (55:18)
Yeah,
but it's a dangerous dream. It's a dangerous dream for the other person. And so I guess the way I would frame what you're saying is what I think happens right now is people give up their safety for the dream. And I'm encouraging people to not give up their safety for the dream. They can have both safety and a dream. But I also think visas are set up. This level of violence that I felt when they changed
the Netherlands changed their visa structure overnight. ⁓ suddenly, if you lose your job, like having a visa, first of all, is a new level of vulnerability. If you're ⁓ dependent on someone who has a visa, that's another level of vulnerability. So you're in the country at the mercy of your partner's job, and then your partner still wanting you, that's another layer. And so what I guess at the heart of it,
for me, it's a little bit of a violent system. And so that's something that if you don't take personally and know it exists, it's a lot easier to plan for. it's not your partner's fault, it's not their company's fault. It's kind of a violent system. So you're entering a new level of vulnerability, also fun and adventure and all the other stuff. But I think if you plan at the safety level, it also helps a lot with the rest.
And that's emotional safety, financial safety. so that for me is something I want people to understand is it's inherently, again, you have to be adventurous, but you don't have to give up your safety either with therapists or with your partner or financially. Yeah.
Karina Lagarrigue (56:59)
at any point.
is this part also of when you talk about violence, something that we see as well is that there is a higher rate of violence among experts. And a lot of it is psychological violence, right? And all this manipulation and dependency, financial dependency that has to do. But unfortunately, some of it is also physical abuse that happens due to this dependency. Like, how am I going to dare to go to a psychologist if I,
House Of Peregrine (57:15)
Yeah.
Karina Lagarrigue (57:32)
I want to say is that I am being beaten at home and he's the one that has to pay for the therapist to who I want to talk about it. So all those things are adding layers also of vulnerability that are real, real meaning that they're not only psychological or financial but also physical and the same happens with minors. We see that a lot of our population unfortunately experience a lot of sexual abuse.
in their developmental years. And it has to both to do with this lack of safety in terms of ⁓ constantly changing social interaction norms. So when an abuser is part of their environment, it might be because they didn't quite understood what was going on because of these cultural differences and how the child was not instructed in how to perhaps say no.
Doesn't matter whether it's a new country, if it's a no for you, it's a no everywhere. And then there is also, unfortunately, the violence that most of the time happens within the family, because unfortunately, only 20 % of the cases is somebody from the closed environment not being directly blood related. And only 10 % is violent, meaning that 90 % of the time is very subtle, is very built upon the years.
And if you think about relocation, brings an additional layer of complexity because your parents are the only ones that remain stable. They are the only ones that are with you all along. So how dare are you going to go ahead in a foreign country where you know nobody, where you have no system, where you don't even know what are your rights and say that your partner is abusing on your child or that your father is abusing on yourself. It's very...
House Of Peregrine (59:25)
Yeah, so that's another layer of you really are your family is everything, especially for kids like they are your only ones. ⁓
Karina Lagarrigue (59:34)
they're the only one that remains stable. it becomes this dependency, this emotional dependency that adds a layer of complexity and vulnerability to the unit.
House Of Peregrine (59:45)
Yep. So would you say that for me, this is like, how does anyone make it through this? How does, make it through, you're not going to make it through unchanged, but what are the questions you would ask yourself if you were in a couple or a family constellation to maybe test if you're strong enough to do this, if you have the choice and you want to keep
reasonably safe financially, emotionally, are there, I mean, they always say green flags or are there advice you would give to be able to check? Because until you're in it, you don't really know. They say you don't know a person until you see them with their parents or something. I would say there's another layer of that. You don't really know a person until you've lived abroad with them. There's another, like you said, things that emerge that have always been there that maybe would have stayed latent.
⁓ and good things too, good things, amazing things, but there's also these other less trick, more tricky things. And so are there ways, things you can ask ways of preparing?
Karina Lagarrigue (1:00:55)
So the first thing I would say is that not necessarily each relocation is the same as we were saying for a person, because you're thinking about the two of them moving abroad. So the two of them being like in your country, my country or Switzerland, right? So going to Switzerland. But in some scenarios, many, many couples, as I was saying, would move to one of the partners country, right? And when I say one of the partners country, I can also say one of the sites, companies or institutions.
I am moving to my husband's diplomat institution and this is the institution that is going to kind of frame what is going to happen for both of us and for me. I think there is a part, unfortunately, I don't work with sided responsibility in terms of, hey, you're the diplomat so you're the one moving them abroad so you are the one responsible for. I work on a 50-50 responsibility.
House Of Peregrine (1:01:26)
Yeah.
Karina Lagarrigue (1:01:53)
you are responsible for what is happening to your family as much as you are as well. If you want to move into this diplomat life, just get informed. Get the information yourself. Be the one that is self-informed of how things are going to go for you in any possible scenario. Get the easy information. Don't rely on the other one that he'll know. He's the expert. I can ask him because that's where all the manipulation on the information is much more accessible because it's like
Well, you don't understand anything so I can tell you whatever I please. And I can tell you the story the way I want you to hear it and you will just be additionally even more vulnerable. Right. So I think there is this beginning of the journey starting with individual responsibility. And unfortunately, as you were saying, and we have been saying along, right, people are just going into the journey. That's going to be fun. And that's it. And they don't look into the long term. They don't look into how is it going to be for me.
How is it going to be for you? And this is why when I work with couples, the first thing that I do is individual assessment. Individual assessment that gets me to understand how each of them work. How are each of them going to confront the next experience? How is it going to be for them, given their own trajectory, personality trait, how they do things, right? And that gives me already a sense of, okay, well, this is going to be challenging for you because if you don't...
make any decision for instance in your life. I have a couple that is like that. They're now moving from Spain to Belgium but he is in Belgium and he's been in Belgium for longer right and she's the one that is expatriating for the first time right. Both Spanish but he's been in Belgium for a while now so he knows Belgium and she's relocated because he has a job there but she has to start from zero so it's a relationship that is led
by him making the choices. They've been together for years and all along their relationship has been led by him making the choices and the decision. He's expressing that he's done with that, right? But when she starts putting on her little foot down, like, okay, then this is going to be how it's going to be in Belgium and this is... He's not feeling comfortable because it's a dynamic he's not used to, right? So everything starts with...
First of all, acknowledging, okay, we are in a certain dynamic that when we move abroad, this dynamic is not necessarily going to change. And in some circumstances, it's going to add vulnerability to the couple. So I think it's super important to gain self-awareness and self-understanding before you initiate any journey. How do I work? Like, I didn't know I was so adaptable until I understood, I'm a TCK. That's what I do. All right. So that's why I gave in here and here and here and here and here.
⁓ okay. Had I known that TCKs have this tendency to be hyper-adaptable and just give in and just, yeah, sure, I'll just be resilient. Probably I wouldn't have given on so many things I had in the past. And of course, when I change, my relationship changes as well. There is a need for internal activation, right? I keep hearing a lot of resistance in the couples when I work with them.
But why should I be always the one initiating or presenting the problem or saying, well, are you interested in the change? Because if you are interested in the change, then don't expect the other one to be the one activating it, because maybe he's not.
House Of Peregrine (1:05:35)
Yeah, it's often that men don't want it to change. ⁓ But what I've said, there's a really ⁓ beautiful book Mark Gaffney and others have said, you know, every crisis of a relationship is a deepening of intimacy, is an asking for a deepening of intimacy. And so that, I think if we trust that in our partners, they want to stay with you, but it has to change. That's a really good, yeah.
Karina Lagarrigue (1:06:00)
Exactly. It's what we were
saying before. It's like you need to know what you want to gain, but then you have to agree in action what you're ready to let go. What are you ready to let go? ⁓
House Of Peregrine (1:06:10)
Yep,
yep. And that don't let go of safety is what I want people to know. Don't give up safety.
Karina Lagarrigue (1:06:19)
Absolutely, absolutely. At
every point, at no point you should feel more vulnerable than as we were saying you will already be just by the fact of being an expert.
House Of Peregrine (1:06:30)
Yeah,
but what I think that what I learned, I think, from this TED Talk experience is often that is what's happening, is people are giving up their safety and that shapes things a certain way, shapes society a certain way, shapes the financial system a certain way. So I think these conversations are always a little bit fraught because it's outside the norm. And so for me, starting with acknowledging that being what you're saying,
this extra layer of being vulnerable is a really good framing to face it as a couple or as a family. So you're facing it together instead of fighting each other. so, yeah, yeah, it's another, it's another interesting battle to start in the middle. but yeah, cool. Is there anything else? I want to be mindful of your time because we're closing up our time. Is there anything else about
Karina Lagarrigue (1:07:10)
Exactly, but it has to be clear from the start.
House Of Peregrine (1:07:29)
your next phase of research that you want to talk about, the postdoc I think you said that you're working on. Is there anything you want to share with us on that further that we haven't talked about?
Karina Lagarrigue (1:07:40)
Well, I think the most important thing that I don't know if it's going to turn into a postdoc or not, it's this understanding that, well, we are like life is moving into a place where change is the only constant that we have. And therefore we need to, as you were saying, like the world works the way it is working at this moment because we are supporting and sustaining dynamics and systems that are no
longer the accurate ones and the right one for what is going on for the world that we live in. So in order to stop supporting and just prolonging the challenges and the problems, we need to start activating changes in how we see things, how we name things, what we do with things. And I think a lot of it we have the data, we're still not activating it in real life.
I think the next steps on my end at least is to bring this awareness to big companies, big institutions that are mobilizing families. I think we need to activate some of the systems that they have, as I was saying, at the bottom of list, but not upfront and putting them in a different position, such as you and I are saying, safety first, safety at work, safety in the relationship, safety in school, safety. Safety has to be there.
how to create safety is very complex, especially in a multicultural environment as we are all navigating, because for each person, safety looks in a different way, right? But it doesn't feel different, if that makes sense. So we have that. We have that. Can we help people feel safe? Can we create tools that help us really measure how safety people
feel? Not are, not are on a number because they have financial security, not on a number. How do they feel? From there, then we can start activating real change and move into something different. But I think at this point, we still don't understand. We are still not fully understanding the impact of global mobility on us as individuals that are globally mobile, but also on those that receive us and are impacted by us.
landing their country in their culture and so on and neither for the companies that are still spending billions of dollars euros you name the coin in relocating families without giving them the safe frame and therefore just just failing just failing failing the person behind the job which is which is the people i work with, the people.
House Of Peregrine (1:10:30)
Yeah, great. So beautifully said, and I'm so, so happy we got to touch on so many topics today. I love that you were able, you and I are able to hop around like that together. So many important things we covered. If people want to reach out to you, either to participate in any research you have going on, because I know last time we spoke, I ended up doing your motherhood survey and sending it out to my community. But is there anything
What's the best way people can reach you if they either want to work with you or they want to follow what your research is up to? What's the best way?
Karina Lagarrigue (1:11:05)
I would say I'm very active, as you were mentioning before, on LinkedIn. think that's one of the networks that I would say helped me to reach out to most of the people that are in the positions to help me do the changes that I want to. Right? Because I think there's still need, again, as we were saying, they're very brainy people and we need to move them into the body. So bring the awareness on how everything is interconnected and for them to reach out at the best performance, they need to be at the best state of mind.
and that includes their emotions, right? So a lot of it is on LinkedIn. I do post some things on Instagram, but I'm finding it a little bit challenging. I may get a community manager or somebody to do that for me, but there are some things there too, if you want something a little bit more kind of interactive. I am always, always happy to collaborate with podcasts. So there are different postcards, just like yourself, that I've been invited to and I'm touching on different topics that we have, maybe perhaps in a little bit more depth individually.
if you're interested. But then I'm a very approachable person. So you can always reach out to me by email and if there is any way I can possibly help you or I can perhaps even just help you to find the right person, I will be happy to do so. So just use my email, go to my website. My trainings for companies are going to be in a separate website but attached to my website as well. So www.ExpertWorldPsychologies.com
where you can reach out to me directly and you have my phone, WhatsApp and everything.
House Of Peregrine (1:12:36)
Great. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to talk to you and I cannot wait. I'm sure you'll be back again.
Karina Lagarrigue (1:12:44)
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Thank you for your wonderful questions and especially for the reframing that I think make everything clear to your community and the people.
House Of Peregrine (1:12:56)
Great. Thank you to all of you for listening to the podcast. Please like and subscribe wherever you're listening to this. It helps us a whole bunch. And join us next time on the House of Peregrine podcast.