Why Going Home Is So Complex for Immigrants: A Jungian Perspective

Each year, as the holiday season arrives, many immigrants begin preparing for a journey that is both deeply meaningful and unexpectedly exhausting: returning home.

On the surface, it sounds simple—visiting family, reconnecting with familiar places, eating foods you’ve missed. And yet, as many of my immigrant clients share, the emotional toll of going home is often far heavier than people expect.

In my clinical work with immigrants—especially international professionals in Silicon Valley who live far from their families—I see this pattern every year.

This season is when many of them need extra support. Returning home is not always as sweet as a fairytale.

Time apart doesn’t dissolve tension; it simply places it on pause. And once immigrants return to the physical space of origin, all the feelings that were held, postponed, or avoided can resurface quickly and intensely.

Jungian psychology gives us a meaningful framework to understand this experience—through the concept of the complex.

Understanding the Complex

In Jungian psychology, a complex is an emotionally charged cluster of memories, beliefs, sensations, and reactions held in the unconscious. Complexes form around significant early experiences—family interactions, cultural conditioning, emotional wounds, or formative relationships.

A complex is not a flaw. It is a normal psychological structure. But when touched, it can feel intense, surprising, or overwhelming.

I often describe it like this:

A complex is a psychological knot. Distance may loosen it—but it never fully disappears.

How the Complex Is Activated When Immigrants Return Home

Family-of-Origin Complexes Awaken Instantly

Stepping back into your childhood home often reactivates roles you thought you outgrew. You may feel yourself shrinking, pleasing, defending, or caretaking again—sometimes without realizing it. Even if you have changed, the family system may still relate to an older version of you.

Homeland Complexes: Emotional Geographies

Returning to your hometown, slipping back into your native language, or revisiting old community spaces can quickly bring forth layers of memory and emotional history. These don’t come back in sequence—they come back all at once.

This is why I often tell clients:

"Distance freezes the complex in time, but returning home thaws it all at once."

Seasonal Return as an Emotional Amplifier

Holidays and short visits intensify everything: expectations, pressure to perform certain roles, limited time, family obligations, cultural rituals, and unresolved conflicts. You may feel like you are carrying years’ worth of emotional labor compressed into a few days.

Before the Trip: Preparing

A. Expect Activation Instead of Hoping for Smoothness

Preparing emotionally reduces shame and self-blame.

B. Identify Predictable Triggers

What conversations, comments, or relational patterns tend to pull you back into old roles?

C. Set Gentle, Realistic Expectations

Your job is not to heal the family system in one visit.

D. Create a Grounding Plan

• Intentional boundaries

• Daily quiet time

• Contingency plans if conflicts arise

• Brief getaways from home (a café, a solo walk, staying a night elsewhere)

During the Trip: Managing

A. Notice When You’re "Time Traveling"

Sudden guilt, urgency, anger, or helplessness may be old emotional material—not current reality.

B. Slow Down When Old Patterns Pull You In

Pauses, breathwork, or stepping outside can interrupt automatic reactions.

C. Adjust Expectations Moment by Moment

Both joy and overwhelm can coexist.

D. Micro-Boundaries

• Take walks

• Limit emotionally charged topics

• Shorten visits if needed

• Find your ally (a supportive family member, friend, partner to debrief with)

After the Trip: Recovering

A. Give Yourself Time to Re-Enter Your Current Life

Returning home often means returning to a psychological "version" of yourself. It may take time to reconnect with the self you live as today.

B. Debrief Your Reactions

Notice what felt familiar, what felt new, and what surprised you.

C. Reflect on Growth

Even difficult visits can highlight how much inner work you’ve already done.

D. Repair Your Inner Balance

Rest, intentional grounding, and reconnecting with the support systems in your current life can help restore emotional equilibrium.

Returning Home with Care

Seasonal returns carry an extra emotional burden for immigrants—one that often goes unseen by others.

Returning home isn’t just a logistical trip. Complexes are inevitably activated when immigrants return home.

It’s an encounter with the emotional past, the family system, and the cultural layers that shaped you.

If you find returning home both meaningful and exhausting, you’re not alone.

It is brave to leave home, and it is brave to return.

And each time you come back, you bring with you the growth, resilience, and clarity that distance has helped you cultivate.

Returning home can stir the emotional knots we carry, as distance thaws the complex of memory, family, and identity.