Changing your usual environment inevitably leads to stress, and one of the most severe shocks is associated with moving. The move can be planned or urgent, desired or forced, but still a person has to get used to the new environment.
Moving seriously changes a person's lifestyle
Changes can affect only small everyday aspects: moving to a similar apartment on the same street, but they can be drastic: another city or even another country, changing a village to a city, or a sharp deterioration in living conditions. In this case, worries from hassles associated with organizational issues and adaptation to the situation in a new place are superimposed external factors: change of school or kindergarten in a child, a change of job, a change in the usual environment and way of life. How to mentally prepare for this and reduce the stress of moving?
All people, even the easiest ones, experience psychological stress when moving. This is due to the fact that a familiar environment gives a feeling of stability and security, while moving almost always is fraught with some uncertainty. In addition, emotional ties bind him to the place where a person has lived for some time. You always have to give up some things, leave them in old apartment forever or transfer to other people. This is often perceived as a symbolic rejection of part of the past and is experienced painfully.
Moving can be a logical part of a new stage of life: the first own, even rented, home for grown children; wedding; birth of a child; improvement of material well-being; changing cities as part of career growth. Sometimes this is a conscious step with the goal of radical changes in fate. Nowadays it is very popular for city residents to move to the countryside, away from civilization. In this case, changes are almost always known in advance, and there is time to prepare for them.
At the same time, when moving becomes a kind of boundary between two stages of life, stress is caused not so much by the fact of changing place of residence, but by the realization that a person is entering a new phase. The move serves as a unique and most a significant symbol these changes.
If the reasons for moving are related to negative events - divorce, worsening financial situation, the need to move to a sick relative to care for him - stress usually increases many times over. Often such moves are urgent, and preparation for them is chaotic. In this case, they become evidence of the instability of life and further increase anxiety and fear of the future.
Preparing for a move includes two aspects: psychological and organizational. The first implies the right attitude, not only for upcoming changes, but also for the technical nuances of preparation. Packing things, loading them into the car and settling into a new place inevitably causes turmoil, confusion and can end in irritation and quarrels. And if it is not always possible to avoid anxiety about the future, then it is quite possible to prevent stress from getting ready. To do this, you should adhere to several rules:
If you follow these recommendations, moving will be much easier emotionally. The right attitude will help you remove negative aspects. In your imagination you need to draw a positive image of the future in a new place. This is easy to do if the reasons for moving are related to pleasant changes in life. It is more difficult to remain optimistic if the change of residence was forced. In this case, experts recommend realizing the need for this step and taking it. Yes, these are not the changes that were desired, and they will cause inconvenience or pain. But moving is a new page in our lives, an opportunity to look at ourselves in a new way and change something.
Before moving, you should decide on the things you plan to take with you.
A grateful farewell to the past will also help: mentally say thank you to your former home for the pleasant moments associated with it. Usually after this comes a feeling of completion and lightness, with which it is easier to meet new things, no matter how frightening they may be. You can make farewell more tangible - have a party with friends or a farewell tea party.
In the same way, in a new place it makes sense to perform some kind of ritual. It doesn’t matter what it will be - the traditional letting a cat into the apartment, the first tea party or something else. The main thing is that there is internal acceptance of the new place.
Children, unlike parents, generally do not influence the family’s decision to move; they are simply presented with a fait accompli. For both children and teenagers, such changes in their lives can cause anxiety and protest, especially if their social circle changes dramatically with the move. Joining a new team is not easy even for adults, but they more experience and more stable self-esteem. When moving to another city, connections with old friends are cut off, you have to establish contacts from scratch, the teenager has to re-gain authority among his peers, get used to new school. One of the ways to reduce stress is to talk with your child about upcoming changes in a positive way, reminding him of the previous successful experience in similar situations.
Moving can also be stressful for animals. In a sense, they have the worst time of all, because they cannot prepare for it in advance and understand what is happening. It is better to protect the animal from the turmoil associated with taking things out, and give it to friends or paid foster care on this day - this will be less stressful for the pet. In a new place, pets need to be given time to explore the situation. For dogs can be hidden in different places favorite treats at home. During the first time in a new place, owners must monitor their pet and prevent its attempts to return to an old house- Do not let dogs off leash during walks and do not allow animals to run out of the apartment.
There are no universal recipes for how to survive a move painlessly. But a positive attitude and a willingness to accept changes in life not as an ordeal, but as new opportunities and new experiences, will help to significantly reduce anxiety and worries. A proper organization process will help to avoid unnecessary nervousness and make moving and settling into a new place as quick as possible.
The experience of generations tells us about the existence of important rituals and signs. When changing place of residence, the influence of signs and beliefs can be especially striking. Moving to new apartment- global changes, and changes do not have stability. Therefore, it is during this time period that you should direct your attention to the wisdom of the people - signs. Here are the most important signs and beliefs that it is advisable for all new residents to take into account.
If you entered a new apartment and saw a white spider on the ceiling or walls, then do not rush to deal with it. According to old folk signs, this albino brings happiness and the possibility of a pleasant event to the house. If it was in the intended bedroom, then this promises long-term harmony in the relationship between the spouses.
These insects signify with their presence a happy place and good energy. Of course, they cause trouble for people by their appearance in the apartment, but ants live only in bright places.
But if a beetle, especially a large one, is crawling or flying in the house, this is a sure sign of future misfortune and loss. This is a sad sign, so if you see such a sign before purchasing an apartment or house, it is better to think twice about it. If this house has already been purchased, then under no circumstances should you kill the beetle. Catch the bad messenger and release him. Let the beetle pick up and take away its sadness.
Black mold does not always occur only from dampness in the room. Often it symbolizes the presence of unkind and oppressive energy in the home. You should postpone moving to a new apartment, clean everything thoroughly and perform some of the rituals described below in this article.
If at the old place of residence there was always order and cleanliness, things were not often lost, and at night no one knocked or rustled, scaring the inhabitants of the house, then you should definitely take this well-mannered brownie with you.
Our ancestors greatly respected this private and powerful neighbor. It was he who protected the home from uninvited guests, fires and accidents, especially with infants.
Before moving, your little neighbor needs to be lured with milk and a bright box of any shape. Place the open box next to the milk that was poured into the saucer for the brownie. It is advisable to put a teaspoon in the box, not a new one, but one that has been used in the family for some time. Leave it all overnight, and in the morning you can transport your guardian. In a new apartment, you need to open the box, leave it in this position for an hour, and you yourself need to leave, so as not to interfere with the brownie calmly going out and finding a place to his liking.
The cat is the brownie's assistant. If you have a cat, be sure to let her into the house first when moving. She will help the brownie find his comfortable corner. Our ancestors did not enter the new home first. According to popular belief, only the cat had such a privilege.
A folk sign says that to attract wealth and good work, you need to attach the smallest coin over the door of a new house, and for big and small luck you need to hang a horseshoe over the door. However, there is one nuance here - a horseshoe cannot be bought or accepted as a gift. You can only find it. Only in this case will it be filled with your luck and will radiate it constantly.
It is better to enter a new place of residence in order of seniority. Order and respect - harmony in the head, in thoughts, which means order in the entire environment.
WITH empty handed It’s better not to enter your home for the first time. You can bring it with you flowering plant. A flower brought on the day of moving will attract the energy of the sun and rebirth.
Our grandparents were sure that the threshold in the house was an important place associated with the energy of our ancestors. This means that an excellent solution would be to thoroughly wash this important place in the apartment when moving. Try not to trip on the threshold when entering your new home. A folk sign tells us clearly - this bad sign. You can put a piece of mesh under the threshold or under the threshold covering. It can be any mesh, but only made of threads. It is believed that a dark and evil person who thinks or plans evil will never be able to carry it out in your home. Having crossed the threshold with the net, he will instantly lose his strength, and his thoughts will begin to get confused. You may even see this effect later, noticing that your guest has no strength at all, and his words are often meaningless and overly frank.
Sprinkling the corners of a new house with coarse salt is an old sign. Salt has always been considered a special substance, which was often used by sorcerers to create amulets and protective spells. Leave the salt in the corners for an hour or two, and then wash the floors throughout the house. Salt will take away everything bad and unclean.
Of course, the most important thing when moving to a new apartment will be the ritual of reading prayer. This must be done calmly, without fuss. Go into an apartment with an icon, place it in the central corner, and then thoughtfully read the words of the prayer. It is advisable to leave the icon in this place forever. Then cross all the corners and windows, moving clockwise.
There are things that, according to popular customs, should not be kept in an apartment:
It is not recommended to keep these things in the house, and taking them with you to a new home is doubly wrong. Such care and attachment to these things only enhances their negative effect on others. Moving to a new place is an excellent reason to leave everything unnecessary and harmful outside the new life.
There is no need to disturb the atmosphere of the new place with obscene language or scandal, especially on the first day of moving. You need to start with a positive, because a good and correct foundation promises great success in the future.
It is better to bring a piece of sugar, a handful of beans or peas with you. According to traditions, sugar symbolizes pleasure, and legumes symbolize financial well-being, so let them lie on the windowsill for a day.
It will be very useful in advance, before moving, to prepare small bunches of wormwood, tying them with red thread. This plant has magical power and is capable of expelling dark spirits and entities. You can even light a sprig of mugwort and let it smolder, spreading protective smoke throughout your new home.
And when the basic things fall into place, it will be useful to prepare a festive lunch or dinner. It would be correct to serve pies that were already prepared in the new apartment. This will consolidate a positive acquaintance with new energy and set the vibrations in a positive mood.
Don’t say goodbye to your old home negatively, don’t say bad words about it, don’t remember grief and pain - ingratitude is always punishable. Even if life in your old place was not very sweet, you need to appreciate the good and thank you for the lessons and obstacles that tempered and strengthened you.
Try to move to a new house or apartment in good weather. Folk signs note the connection between weather and future life in a new place:
When moving, it is not necessary to follow absolutely all the recommendations and take everything into account folk signs. Sometimes it is enough to listen carefully to your inner world and determine for yourself closer options for rituals or necessary actions.
Folk signs and traditions, formed over centuries of observation, help to achieve well-being and health. Ignoring ancient rituals or listening to the intuition of the people is an individual choice for everyone. But why not think about them, what if they provide a real opportunity to protect yourself, your family, and give a start to your successful future in a new apartment, and maybe even your life.
“When I left the notary, having sold my apartment, fear suddenly came over me, almost panic. Why did I start all this? What have I done? I wanted to scream: “Give me back my house!” - recalls 35-year-old Natalya. “But just recently I was flying with wings at the mere thought that my little son and I would finally move from a cramped one-room apartment to a more spacious apartment!” According to a study by the International Marketing Research Institute TNS Sofres, 70% of us experience serious stress when moving. Especially women - 82% of them admit that they went through it with difficulty.
We often think that it's all about the power of habit, which makes it so difficult to part with a house, yard, or neighborhood. However, psychotherapist Maria Fedorova believes that it is more accurate to talk about attachment: “Attachment implies security, reliability, stability. A house is a lived-in, fenced area, it is imbued with our spirit and memories. All this is our history. This is the shell where we hide, feeling safe. Parting with her, we feel very uncomfortable.”
A person is characterized by a fear of change, be it a change of job, place of residence, or a new relationship.
Psychologist Alexandra Suchkova adds: “People generally have a fear of change - be it a change of job, place of residence, or new relationship. Any new situation increases the degree of uncertainty, and therefore anxiety: how will everything turn out now?” This is why moving is so exhausting. But when we make a decision, new potential appears in life. This is a sign of a desire to live, change, move forward.
Today it is difficult to imagine a person who would never change the roof over his head. If previously notorious housing problem forced two or even three generations of a family to coexist together, now young people, barely getting back on their feet, strive to live separately, at least in a rented apartment. Marriage, birth of children, career growth, divorce, new marriage - important milestones in biography are often accompanied by a change of place of residence.
“A change of place of residence is the end of one life period and the beginning of a new one,” agrees 40-year-old Yana. - This is an opportunity to redefine, renew and get rid of excess burden. I throw away clothes that have been lying in the closet, gifts from former lovers..."
These are not always changes for the better. Sometimes divorce, loss high paying job, a credit trap may force you to move to a smaller apartment, change the center to a remote area. And this also increases anxiety, our image suffers: since I now live in a cramped and cheap apartment, then my “I” seems to decrease. However, any move encourages us to search for our own identity: “Who am I? What am I doing with my life? Are you satisfied?
Saying goodbye to an old house gives us the opportunity to take an “inventory” of the events experienced in it
This is always a summing up of interim results, and it is very important, says Alexandra Suchkova, to pay close attention to this procedure: “Farewell to the old house provides a precious opportunity to take an “inventory” of the events experienced here, to figure out what role we played in them, what we did wrong and what we can change in the future. If you experience farewell honestly, being aware of your feelings, then these reflections can become a psychological resource for solving new problems.”
Agreeing with this, Maria Fedorova adds: “It would be nice to say thank you to yourself, to others, to the house for all the good things that happened here. And also talk to your family, compare your feelings: what was important to you? How do you remember it? Such a natural boundary allows us to express what is important in Everyday life we don’t discuss, and it’s better to understand each other, together figure out what we want to change, starting life in a new place.”
Saying goodbye to one’s native walls involuntarily revives the experience of past separations, starting with the very first - with the mother’s womb, believes Maria Fedorova. And therefore, changing place of residence is always traumatic. The situation is aggravated by all the accompanying circumstances: unceremonious or unscrupulous realtors, scammers operating in the housing market, whom you have to be wary of. Finally, a line potential buyers, whose visits are often perceived painfully.
“Our home is a projection of our “I”, this is our protected world. And when strangers come into it, examine and evaluate it, we perceive it as if they are evaluating and criticizing us,” comments Alexandra Suchkova.
The packing is in full swing, we are packing things, throwing others away... And, looking around, we see that our nest is ruined. The old house is no longer there, the new one is not there yet. This intermediate moment is the most difficult. “Any transition is always a test, a step into the unknown,” says Maria Fedorova. “We see our nest, so cozy, beloved, into which so much effort was invested, destroyed. And we ruined it ourselves, with our own hands. This gives rise to a feeling of guilt and orphanhood.”
At every step we find ourselves in a situation of choice - which things to take with us and which to get rid of. And suddenly we begin to cling to seemingly complete nonsense. Some old concert ticket will suddenly seem like a treasure - reminding you of a romantic love story. Throwing something away means getting rid of some part of your past. Putting old postcards from childhood in a bag of trash is like moving away from those who once sent them to us. Torn children's books and a shabby teddy bear are witnesses to the continuity of our existence.
“I was going to give my neighbors the set left over from my grandmother, because I have two more of my own, much more beautiful,” recalls 43-year-old Nina. - But at the last moment I did not dare to part with him. As soon as I realized that I was about to lose it forever, it immediately acquired value. I wanted to take with me a lot of seemingly unnecessary things: my son’s school notebooks, a sweater knitted for him 20 years ago by my mother...”
We will line up new system coordinates, “tame” an unfamiliar space, acquire new habits, new acquaintances
“We tend to have children’s magical thinking,” explains Alexandra Suchkova. - We endow objects with special powers, and they become “speaking” and acquire “added value” in our eyes. For the same reason, we experience relief when we get rid of things that bring back painful memories.
When it comes to leaving, it turns out that even what used to irritate us in the house turns out to be an important part of our “fortress”: a harmful neighbor, piano scales coming from the upper apartment... The difficulty of moving lies in the loss of familiar landmarks and in the efforts that will have to be made apply to create a new living space.
We may laugh at superstitions, but nevertheless we let the cat in first through the threshold, then we rush to wash the floor of our new apartment for the first time. These ancient rituals are symbolic acts that help to adapt to new conditions. The cat will “protect” the house from evil spirits, and the water will clear the space of the presence of previous residents.
“There is no need to drive away sadness and a feeling of loss; it is much better to accept them,” says Alexandra Suchkova.
“At first it seems that we have destroyed, cut off some memories,” notes Maria Fedorova. - But time will pass, we will use familiar things, look at the photographs we brought with us - and we will discover that the memories remain with us. And this helps to “put yourself together” again. We will build a new coordinate system, “tame” an unfamiliar space, acquire new habits, new acquaintances. There are always new opportunities that open up for us.”
Anyone who has had to move to a new apartment at least once in their life is well aware of the feeling of “prostration” that arises when looking at numerous things in closets, nightstands and shelves. It’s not for nothing that moving is “equal to one fire” - some things are lost, some break and break on the road, and some simply disappear somewhere in an unknown way. There is no need to talk about the amount of effort and nerves expended.
Here are the main secrets of a proper move!
The most common mistake people make when moving is to pack their things at the last minute. It would seem that “everything will be done in time!”, but - alas and ah - the result of getting ready in the last hours before the arrival of the car is always equally deplorable.
Therefore, it is better to start preparing in advance.
It is almost impossible to collect the things that you have accumulated in your old apartment even in 1 year in 1 day.
Therefore, the ideal time to “start” is a week before the move. The most important thing when packing is packaging.
If you wear suits, you'll be glad to know that there are cardboard "closets" for safely transporting expensive items directly on hangers.
In order not to spend a painfully long time looking for clothespins or tights in all the boxes in a new apartment, which no one ever sorts right away (usually this takes from a week to a month, and for those who are especially lucky, up to a year), Use the rules of proper packing:
Don’t rely on “strong” furniture and “caring” movers.
If your furniture is dear to you, then take care of its safety before moving.
If you are sending things to another city by container, then pay special attention to packing furniture and boxes!
Of course, the ideal option is to send pets and children to relatives during the move. Firstly, it will be easier for parents, and secondly, it will protect children and young animals from accidental injuries.
And don’t forget to take a couple of days off to move and unload your things in the new place. Moving after work is an ordeal.
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