Why moving can make you feel lonelier, and what to do about it
Tracey Zhang on the ‘relocation loop,’ ambiguous grief, and simple somatic practices that build an inner home.
“Whenever we talk about grief, we often associate it with death. But we also experience ambiguous grief when we relocate.” - Tracey Zhang
That line landed early and kept returning. Tracey Zhang left home at 16, has lived in six cities, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Vancouver (four years), Toronto and now New York, and what she names as the core of relocation distress isn’t a missing café or friend group. It’s a loss of identity, a string of small deaths that pile up until the body remembers them.
The losses you expect, and the ones you don’t
Most people can list what they lose when they move: family, familiar routines, titles. Tracey breaks it down further into three layers people often undercount: safety, connection, and identity. The hardest to name is identity, grieving “the person who you once were.”
She describes arriving in Vancouver after a divorce, financial losses and the death of her grandmother. The plan was “three months,” like so many moves, and four years later she’d done the inner work that shifted everything. Before that, she says, she pretended she was fine because nobody taught her how to process homesickness or grief.
That pretending shows up as delayed crashes: a honeymoon phase of excitement, then a quiet collapse months later when the novelty wears thin. Tracey calls it the relocation loop: unsettled, hope projected onto the next place, move, honeymoon, the old feeling returns. The loop is what keeps people moving again and again to fix something that lives inside them.
“The loop looks like this… you project hope onto the next place, and after three months the old feeling returns.” - Tracey Zhang
Break the loop with presence, not plans
Tracey’s core prescription is to stop using geography as therapy. The practical move that changed her pattern was inner work: slowing down, naming emotions, and letting those feelings land in the body instead of being pushed away.
She contrasts two relocation strategies. The negative loop uses escape and projection; the positive loop uses presence and alignment. The difference isn’t moralizing, it’s practical: when you sit with unsettled feelings you can make choices from alignment rather than fear. That’s how Vancouver turned from a place she wanted to flee into a place that “fulfilled its purpose.” Moving next to Toronto and New York felt easier because she had done the work first.
Tracey also maps the social side of loneliness into two types: social (no casual network) and emotional (surrounded by people but not seen). Both matter, but she emphasizes a sequence: you often need to reconnect with yourself before you can reliably find people who get you.
Small, repeatable somatic tools that actually work
When she says “inner work” she means concrete body-based practices that send different signals to your nervous system than thinking does. Three reliable channels she uses with clients are breath, sound, and movement:
Breath: simple coherence breathing (inhale 4, exhale 4) to regulate heart rhythm and open the body to connection.
Sound: an intentional sigh or exhale to let energy move out of the system.
Movement: intuitive somatic movement, shaking, hugging yourself, walking, not choreographed exercise but listening to what your body wants.
Tracey’s plain-language framing is helpful: your nervous system doesn’t respond to logic. You can tell yourself you’re safe, but the body needs felt signals. Grounding practices (feet on the floor, a self-hug) and predictable routines give the system consistency.
How identity, experimentation and integration fit together
She offers a four-phase pathway for rebuilding after a move: (1) disorientation, (2) somatic calming and processing, (3) experimentation (joining groups, trying hobbies), and (4) integration, reflecting on what’s true and what you’re ready to leave behind.
A common hang-up is getting stuck in phase 3: trying lots of external things without the internal recalibration needed to let relationships deepen. The fix isn’t just “go to more events”; it’s to practice new ways of showing up so the same people have a chance to see and respond to the real you.
Tracey frames belonging not as a single place you find once, but as something you cultivate and that changes over time. “Belonging isn’t attached to a destination,” she says, it’s found in moments, and in the relationship you carry with yourself.
What to do this week (three small experiments)
Practice four-by-four breathing for two minutes before a social event and notice how your body shifts. Treat it as a testable habit, not a one-off.
When you feel that delayed crash (weeks or months after a move), name it: grief, homesickness, loss of identity. Say it aloud to a friend or in your journal. Naming softens.
Try one somatic movement session: five minutes of free movement in private, shake, sway, hug yourself. Note whether you feel slightly less “on edge” afterward.
These are not cures. They’re ways to teach your nervous system that you are safe enough to stay and make different choices.
Tracey’s last note is worth keeping: you don’t have to eliminate loneliness. It’s a human signal that something needs attention, not proof that you failed. The work she describes turns loneliness from a stop sign into a map.
If you want to hear the whole conversation, Tracey explains more about ambiguous grief, the moments that changed her moves, and how she supports people rebuilding identity after relocation in the full episode. Consider it a companion to these practices, or the kind of company you’d want when you’re learning to be at home in a new body and a new city.